Alan Fluhrer Live on Shally's Alley

Friday! It is Friday, June 10th, and I am in the studio with my special guest, Alan Flohr. Alan is a veteran, and, and I mean that in the best sense of the word, a veteran in the industry who's done quite a few interesting things. We were having an interesting conversation about working at an agency and kind of some of the things that translate into what we do in corporate. So I thought I would bring him on the show to talk a little bit about that. Say hi, Alan.

Hi, Alan.

All right, that's how I like it, a man that follows orders.

Shelly, good to see you, man.

Yeah, good, good to have you on the, on the show, man.

So I'm honored.

Yeah, just for our guests, uh, the, the way to pronounce your name is Fluor, as in like floor, but you know, right? Fluor, is that right?

Yeah, there's a big engineering firm in Southern California called Fluor Engineering, and, um, that's the best way I can tell people to do it because if you spell it, you can't pronounce it.

Gotcha. All right, so you've worked at 3 different agencies and you had your own agency staffing firm, then you went into banking, gas, consumer products, architecture. You even spent some time working on top secret searches. And, uh, and now you're in— it's basically construction, right?

Commercial construction. Yeah, commercial construction. Yeah, we do big stuff. Hotels, big apartment towers, university buildings, etc.

All right, gotcha. And so there, uh, you are a Town Execution Manager, you've been there, this is WEO Neal, right? You've been there for—

5 and a half years.

6 years, okay, there we go.

Yeah, yeah.

Cool, and you are the, you're the first recruiter and continue to be the only recruiter there, right?

So yeah, I am the only recruiter and so most of my work is directly for California, but I do help out the other offices and one of the interesting things I get to do is for the offices that don't, I help teach the non-recruiters how to do some of the recruiting, how to do some of the sourcing, how to do some of the relationship building, and it's been very successful.

Oh, so basically you're teaching kind of like the branch managers or the regional managers how to do their own recruiting even though they're just not recruiters, they're running the business.

Right. So somebody in each office might be sort of the de facto person or spearheading person, and I may have regular conversations with them. And some of them get it, some of them are coming along. And it's really refreshing to a degree because it's funny when non-recruiters start having experiences with candidates that we experience every day. And they'll say, oh my God, Shelly's not accepting the offer. Oh my God, what do I do? Oh my God. What's the problem? It— okay, let's talk it out. It's not a big deal. We can do— oh my God, he— she wants this in the opera! Oh my God, he wants this in the opera! Okay, so what's the problem? Why don't we just do it this way? Oh, we can do that?

Sure.

And then like—

and then you're like, yeah, see, you feel my pain now, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, totally.

So that, that must keep you pretty busy, but on top of that, you also participate or volunteer, I should say, in the free resume review group, right? So like me, you're someone that likes to give back and contribute to the community.

Yeah.

Um, tell me about how that started, the whole free resume review group, and what, and what it is really. And I think it started like because of COVID right?

It started really because of COVID Um, uh, shout out, actually, um, it's two things. The free resume review is a group on Facebook that anybody that needed a little help could get it. That's gone pretty well. Another one that our mutual friend Brett Feig and I, that Brett and I put together was a weekly recruiting. In the beginning of COVID it was sort of for all of us to kind of have connection, get together. But what it really turned into, Shelly, was it was, if you have it, I wish we would have recorded them because it was a case study in how recruiters work with each other, how relationships work, and that we experience when we're looking for jobs, we're experiencing the very same thing that any other candidate experiences, but one of the—

You're the candidate.

Exactly. But one of the things that was fascinating is we started out with about 25 or 30 people, and over months, all of a sudden, they started getting hired. And I would propose that every single person in that group, part of the reason they were hired is because of something somebody else in that group did for them. They made an introduction, they made a call, they gave an opinion. And then once they got a job, a couple of weeks later they were back on and they were helping. So it was great.

Interesting. Now the group's not around anymore or—

No, it is. It's actually every Thursday. It's called the— hold on, I can get it. It is actually, if anybody's interested, we're trying— we're all so busy, we're trying to revive it, but it's every Thursday, 1:00. Well, 1:00 Los Angeles time. So you'll have to make your adjustments. It is called The Talent Collective. And if you go look for The Talent Collective, uh, with, with Brett Feig, um, you'll find it. You'll find the link. And, um, it's nice to see people.

Okay, cool. I'll put it up there when I get a second.

Yeah.

So the other thing that, um, you also do for the community is you actually— you're a Clubhouse leader, right?

Well, I used to be. I was one of the one of the first people on Clubhouse. I thought it was a very interesting platform. I wanted to try it out, and during COVID it was, it was pretty interesting. But, um, I, I, uh, I was an early user. I wanted to see how it would work. What I will say is I still think there may be value in Clubhouse. I think for recruiters, I think that if you're thinking about being on Clubhouse or managing a Clubhouse room, You should think about your sector, your industry, and how you can actually add value even beyond the recruiting. And what I mean by that is I'm in commercial construction, and in every role that I've had, one of the things I've learned, I just, I'm fascinated by how this business works. When I was at the bank, I was fascinated by that. I learned about all the gossip, all the what company is doing what. Who's doing, who's getting acquired, who's laying off, who's building, who's gotten great projects. When you're a recruiter talking to a potential candidate and you can have, you can speak to that, you've really increased your credibility very quickly. And so for Clubhouse, I haven't been on in a while because it's kind of gotten a little messy. And I was, so my opinion only.

Okay, yeah, so you sort of weaned off of it. Yeah, because it got noisy, messy.

Well, it was— there was a particular recruiting, um, club, and it was really interesting. But the problem was, is by the time the host got through, hey everybody, let's introduce and tell us about yourself, you couldn't get through 30, 40 people before all of a sudden now your time's up. And there was— so you, if you're gonna do it, you really have to be really have to be, um, intentional about it. Yes.

So we're going to talk about this and that's it.

Yeah, yeah, that's it.

Yeah, I was wondering about that because I, you know, I was on there, I was invited by my friend Ronnie, and I was on there for a while and I joined a few things, and then it got to the point where I was like, all right, so you got a room full of 300 people, and just like in an actual room with 300 people, who gets to talk, right? Who gets to talk? Who gets to listen? And so you just— it got a little busy for me, so I just haven't been on there in a while. But I do like listening occasionally to people that are talking about something. It's kind of like almost like having a radio show where you can, you know, participate a little bit. It's like a— it's like an interactive radio show, sort of, you know.

And that is one of the best things I did notice. Same, same to your point, Charlie, is if you find a topic you like, it, it can be a really quick way to connect with a person or a couple of people. And this is how you got in touch— this is how you first got in touch with them. If you were— if I didn't know you from Adam and you were talking on— and we were both in a Clubhouse and you were talking, hey, I— that's real interesting. I could send you a request to connect up, and then I could shoot you a LinkedIn and make a note of, hey, we connected on Clubhouse. I, I really loved what you talked about, blah blah blah. I'd love to ask you just one or two questions if you ever have a minute. Um, that can be beneficial. I think right now, last time I've been, I've been on Clubhouse, I saw there was a lot of, uh, NFT and, um, yeah, I saw that too. Yeah, NFT and influencer stuff and blah blah blah. So yeah, I've kind of dialed it down a little bit. Yeah, but we'll see how it ends up.

I hear that. Yeah, well, we had talked about a couple of things that, um, that I thought were pretty important, and one of the, one of the conversations that we had was about sourcing from partners and vendors. Oh yeah, actually using your company's partner organizations and vendors as, as a source of candidates. And that's something that actually, I believe it or not, I put that on my intake meeting form. It's one of the questions that I ask is, do we have any partners or vendors that we could talk to? And, you know, recruiters are always like, why would you want to know that? And I'm like, well, listen, if you're talking to a vendor that sells stuff to us, they probably also sell stuff to other companies like us. Yeah, that's my take on it. But what do you do with that? So tell me a little bit more about that.

So my favorite one is going to be the banking one. So at the bank, they were very technically ahead of themselves. So you had a whole Cisco installation, you had an EMC storage installation, and they were all running on Microsoft servers. And because, and they had, and each of those, there was an EMC, a Cisco, and a Microsoft rep. Okay. So you also need to be careful who you're asking what.

So, um, right, don't spill the beans.

So I needed to hire a couple of Cisco engineers. So I, I'm talking, I built rapport with the Cisco rep, and I'm like, hey, you know, hey, I'm looking for a couple of Cisco guys. Who do you know that I can call? He's like, oh, Alan, I, I don't know anybody. I'm like, I'm thinking, that's BS. And I asked the EMC guy, I need a couple of storage people, and he gave me the same answer. And I And then a couple of days later, I thought, wait a minute, the Cisco guy wants to hire the Cisco people. So I went to the Cisco guy and I said, hey Bob, by the way, I'm looking for some storage engineers.

Do you know a couple of EMC guys?

And he's like, oh my God, I know there's Alan and there's Shelly. Yeah, I mean, and they're over here and they're really unhappy. Oh, okay. And then I went to the EMC guy and I asked him for Cisco people and he was like, oh yeah, Alan, I know these I know these 3 people over here and they're, I don't think they're doing really well. And that really started rolling on itself. And so to your point on the intake meeting, you would ask who are our vendors or whatever. And if the hiring manager has a little bit of an issue, can't quite get their head around that, just say, who do we pay money to, to provide us products or services to run the company?

Right, okay, right. Who are we? Paying to provide us with solutions or with services and then go to them, right?

Exactly. And in addition to that, you might want to be— it's kind of the way you ask the question, because our industry, sometimes they think, but when you want to ask the question in a way that it is a win for that Cisco rep to give me EMC people, So, Bob, hey, look, you know what? And don't— I don't want to ask anybody for a job. Just what one— just what one or two EMC people do you know that I can just keep networking with? I won't ask anybody for a job, but I really respect you. You do good work here at the bank, and I just got to keep networking and figure stuff out. You'll have a better chance of getting names.

Okay, that makes sense. That totally makes sense.

Yeah.

And so tell me a little bit more about when you bring that person, like how do you tell them you got their name from somebody? Is it just like, hey, I'm calling you 'cause you were recommended by someone else? Is it like a regular referral or?

Sure, so there's a couple of different ways. Number one, I learned long ago, if, so if you gave me Bob Smith's name for a position, one of my first questions to you, Shelly, would be, hey Shelly, is it okay to use your name? And if it's yes, that's easy. If it's not, I'll just say, hey Bob, look, you know, my name's Alan Flohr. This is why I'm calling. Look, I'm realistically, you're going to laugh, but I'm calling because during a conversation, Shelly just, he mentioned your name during a conversation. It wasn't as a referral or anything.

And I thought, right.

So that's another way to go.

Yeah. He dropped your name and, you know, and I took it on myself to look you up. So I'm reaching out, um, you know, that's kind of like, yeah, I like that. I like that. Some time ago, um, that there was, uh, and this might have been cool back in the day, but it's not cool anymore. There was, there was a, um, a guy I worked with that used to send out these emails that were his recruiting emails where he, you know, the email would basically say, uh, your name was given to me by somebody that, you know, highly respects you or whatever. Yeah. And it was a, it was a total lie. I mean, it was like he just, you know, found somebody on LinkedIn and they would email them, be like, yeah, your name was given to me by somebody. And it backfired a couple of times because people would be like, well, who gave you the name? And of course he had this way to like, oh, well, you know, they were working with them, they're a candidate, so it's confidential. I can't really share. I don't like that, man. That doesn't feel right with me at all. So I never did it. Um, and another one that he also did, again, the same guy, I don't think he's in the business anymore. Was, uh, was he would say, um, our hiring manager, or the hiring manager said that he wanted to meet you. Like, he told us to come get you, to come look you up. Yeah. And that one also did not sit well with me because I thought— I never did that one, but I thought to myself, well, what if the candidate actually ends up talking to the hiring manager and asks the hiring manager, what made you decide to reach out to me? The hiring manager's gonna be like, what are you talking about?

Yeah.

So Um, kind of feels, I don't know, dirty.

No, I— and I get it. I don't— I, I think I, I may have done that in my first year, but I, I don't think that felt— it felt weird, it felt icky to me. So I just thought, let me be— let me be honest, and I'll just say, look, I was in a conversation with 4 people and Jim mentioned your name. I took it on myself to write down your name. Look, I'm a recruiter, it's what I do. And look, you may laugh at me, but I went to your LinkedIn. You look like you got some interesting background. And at the very least, I wanted to say hi. Um, and also, heads up to everybody, is we're in recruiting, so we're calling people all the time and blah, blah, blah. Do you actually know how somewhat rare it— I mean, there's a lot of people getting hammered all day long, but for the people that are not always on LinkedIn, etc., do you know how how rare it is for them to get a call. And if you're respectful, a little bit of sense of humor, they might not be looking to leave, but they're probably going to talk to you for 5 minutes. And the other one is when you said my manager wants to talk to you. There have been situations where on an intake meeting we will actually go through some LinkedIn profiles and say, what do you think? Before the, before the intake, I kind of got a sense of what you need. Here's a couple of— now, and if the person, if the manager says, oh yeah, I like Bob and I like Jessica, then I can call Bob and Jessica and say, hey, look, here's the situation. Bob, my manager, I went through some profiles and he identified you and one other person initially that he might be interested in. So my boss tells me I got to make the call, Bob. So you can hang up on me or we can have a conversation. And that's legitimate, right?

Right.

I like that.

Tell me a little bit more about that. I know we talked about how you, you actually use this as a technique. You involve hiring managers in sourcing. You actually get hiring managers to do sourcing.

Yes.

For you, for reqs that you're working. So I know you also work with them on, you know, people that have their own— they own their own branch or have their own business, but the people that are actually hiring managers for your reps, how do you get them to do sourcing for you?

Well, I mean, look, it's— they want to hire the right person. So I've— and look, here's, here's something I had to get over, is I'm pretty ADD, and I'm— if, you know, if I didn't call them, then, you know, blah blah blah. It's like, no, the goal is to hire the right person, and if I'm the right person to call them That's great. But if somebody in my company knows Shelly, I'm going to go up to that person, whether they're the hiring manager or not, and say, John, Mike needs to hire somebody. We've identified Shelly. Can you do me a favor and reach out to him? And I did it— look, this week we hired a vice president. And I brought him in. I've known him. I've known the candidate. But I stepped away from the interview process because the hiring team had a handle on it. The vice— the hiring manager called me and said, hey, do you want to send the offer letter or should I? And I said, look, Mike, you've been quarterbacking this. The candidate knows you. I think it's better if I send you the offer letter and it comes from you. That's more— that maintains the— that continues It's a relationship. And he goes, that's great, thanks. So at every step, we should always be able to step away and let go of a little bit of the recruiting ownership, especially if your hiring managers are willing to help. God bless them.

Yeah, that makes sense. But I think you told me a little bit about actually having them sort, like actually source, not just get involved in the process, which obviously that's, that's wonderful. You know, if they're willing to do that, that really bonus, but I think you also mentioned that you, you got them to actually find candidates for you.

Well, sure, because they've got a LinkedIn network. They know in this commercial construction, architecture, and a couple of other industries are case studies on networking. It is an extremely tiny world, as big as it is. And so if, if one of our competitors— I'll walk up and I'll walk up to a hiring manager or a project manager and say, Hey, look, you came from Company ABC. I need— we need a— we need a superintendent. Do you know anybody over there you can reach out to? And they'll normally say, yeah, there's one or two people I think are pretty good. Good. Can you talk to them?

Sure. I'll do—

yeah, I'll text them today. Okay, great. Thanks. That's good.

I like that.

Yeah.

Do you ever, like, actually send them a little blurb to send out? Like, here's a blurb. Can you post this on your network or whatever?

You know, when I first got here, I did that a little bit. But now, now if you're meaning— okay, so if you're talking direct sourcing, I did that a little bit. If you're talking about something they can post to their LinkedIn, yes. Okay, I will do that.

I'll write it for them. Obviously they would edit it a little bit, but like, hey, can you post this on your LinkedIn? Can you post— maybe they are a member of a group on LinkedIn or something that you're not a part of. So, you know, that's— I've done that quite a bit where I write a little write-up and send it to them and they actually just post it right on their group.

Yeah, I do that often. I will call specific people when we have a brand new job, and, uh, if it's— especially if it's nichey— and I'll just say, hey, look, I'm going to send you this LinkedIn, this link. Can you click on it and post it? And if you want to make a comment, I'd appreciate it, and blast it out to your, to your network. Um, but the funny thing, especially in commercial construction and even architecture, is I mean, my most powerful tool, my, my best, beyond the tools and everything else, this is my absolute positively best tool.

And I have one too.

Yeah, you know what, I got a second one too.

Oh man, you got me beat there.

Um, but, uh, you know, I, um, this, this industry is very high touch, it's very relationship oriented, and, um I got, and actually to your point, Shelly, about sourcing your team, I made a couple notes here before our get-together. Just this week, I've gotten 5 referrals from my coworkers, just this week.

Wow.

And now, do I think they're all qualified?

I don't know.

But the other thing that I know is even if I call the person up and they're completely not a fit, and this is a tip for all the recruiters, that might be thinking differently is if I, if this person is not for us, I'm gonna do two things. One, I'm gonna offer them some coaching on their resume. And number two, if I have relationships with other companies or competitors and I think they're a decent person, I will refer them over there. I will send the resume to an executive or somebody else and say, I spoke to this guy, Shelly, I like him, we don't have a place for him, for him. And you know what, if you've got a place, I'd talk with him.

So you are basically giving away candidates?

Oh God, yes, regularly. Oh my God, yes. I've done it for many years when I had my company, when I had the agency. Um, people— I got called all kinds of names by my bosses at the agencies. Um, but what it— in the in our profession and networking, you have to give before you get. And one, something that I've learned is if you want to accelerate the quality of your network, and if you look at the 80/20 rule, is if, if, if you are an executive at a concrete company and we have a pleasant con— a couple of conversations, we meet at an event, and, oh yeah, if you keep your eyes open for Person X. Oh, okay, because we don't compete for those, those types of candidates. Well, if I send you one or two and, oh, thanks, appreciate it, thanks, and then I call you up and I say, hey, look, I'm looking for a project manager, can you give me some suggestions? Oh, Alan, you know, I really can't think of anybody, I'm really sorry. I'll do that twice, but now all of a sudden you've just dropped from my top 20% into my 80% network of I don't know you, and your 20% gets very valuable very quickly.

Gotcha. And sharing people they don't have jobs for with— yeah, gotcha.

Well, and they're also, they're also probably fibbing a little because they don't want you to— they don't want you to take from whoever. But here's the other thing that's interesting. If, if I helped— because he's chiming in here, Glenn— if, if Glenn was not a fit and I called Glenn and said, Glenn, I'm going to submit you to— I'm going to forward you to these two companies If Glenn gets hired, Glenn's gonna call me and thank me. And the next time I need to network, Shally, do you get— do you guess if I call Glenn up, he's gonna be helpful?

Probably.

Yeah, maybe.

I'm pretty sure he would be. He's gonna at least take your call if even if he can't help you, right?

But he'll also be very candid and say, sorry, man, don't have anybody off the hand. Let me think about it. Call me next week. Or, hey, you know what, all my folks are— they're solid right now, but I'll keep looking. Okay, fine, no problem.

That's good. Basically what you're saying, it's kind of a pay-it-forward thing, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And even in my industry, there's probably 10 of me, people like me in Southern California. I kind of know who all of them are, but there's only 2 others. So the 3 of us, we actually work with each— we actually help each other. We refer candidates, we give feedback, and we laugh when somebody goes, oh hey, did you call Bob at Has Bob from Company X called you? No, he never calls me back. He goes, yeah, he called me because he needed something. Oh, what did you tell him? I said, where were you the last 3 times I asked you for help?

Yeah, yeah, it happens a lot.

Yeah, I know.

So something that you do that, um, I, I did a little bit of and I still kind of do occasionally, and I have a really cool anecdote to share with you about this, is you, you use greedy cards? Like, we're talking about, you know, in the mail. Yeah, exactly. Is that a blank piece of paper, basically?

Yeah, with our logo on it.

Yep. Gotcha. Okay, so yeah, so you use greeting cards as a way to— it's, it's not just to say thank you, it's also you're sending it to— you send it to new hires, you send it to referrals, you send it to people that decline offers. Why would you do that?

Okay, so a new hire, it's pretty obvious. Welcome to the family. To people that have actually turned us down and taken another job, if we thought they were a quality person, look, we want to hire every quality person that we interview. Well, it's not going to happen. So I'll send them a card, say, hey, Shelly, look, congratulations on taking the job with Company ABC. Competitively, I say drat and argh, but I know you had to make the best decision at this moment. I look forward to keeping in touch. All the best in your new adventure and your coming success. And it's— I usually get a phone call after that, um, and, um, I also use it when I source every now and then. So occasionally we all run into that person that you— the phone number, you can't find the phone number. In this case I did not want to call him at his company because I knew they were small and I didn't want to put him in an uncomfortable situation, but I couldn't find anything else. But I had his home address. That was easy to find.

So you didn't have his personal number, you had a work number, but it was a small company.

Yeah.

So you mailed him a greeting card.

I mailed him a card and I just said, Shelly, congratulations. You're the first person in 12 months I've not been able to find a cell phone for. I heard good things about you. If you have a moment, I would love to get to know you for 5 minutes. Thank you very much, Alan. And on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, my phone rang and it was Shelly. And he said, hey, Alan, I got your card and I wanted to call you. And after we talked for 10 minutes, he said, I'm doing okay. Here's why I can't leave. It was legitimate. But you know what? Give me a call whenever you need. And the other thing, folks, is sending this, if nothing else, is a piece of mail that's addressed to you that is not a bill asking for money. And who doesn't like to see something that gets very many of those?

Seriously, I don't get— I hardly get any. It's usually an Amazon package, but not an envelope, you know, which is Kind of a segue to the anecdote that I wanted to share with you about that. I hired a sourcer a long time ago based on the fact that, well, first of all, this was a quality candidate, so obviously they deserve the job, but I was alerted to this sourcer because she sent me a book from my wishlist on Amazon. She found me on Amazon knew she wanted to work with me and wanted to be part of my team, and she actually bought me a book that was on my list. It was one of— it was a, you know, I've got a list of like wishlists for professional books, books that I want to read for work. She bought me one, I guess had it sent to her own address, put a handwritten card in it, mailed it to me, and I got this book in the mail. I'm like, wait, I didn't order a book, what's going on? So I opened it up and inside was a card and it said Hey, I would really be— I'd love to be part of your team. How can we make it happen? And I was, I was so impressed. I called her up, you know, interviewed her, and sure enough, she was well qualified. And that was— I would be impressed with so much. It's still to this day, probably my favorite hiring anecdote. Turned out to be a great team member for many years, and now she's, you know, doing really well in leading a sourcing team and everything. So it's kind of a segue from like what you were talking about with the greeting cards. This is a candidate sending me a greeting card through a book. But I could totally see how sending a book to a candidate would actually really be kind of a cool thing to do as well.

It is, and a segue to that, and another one is I learned a long time ago from someone that when, before I started doing retained search for a time, this one lady at one of the big firms that we would all know, she would buy those little 4 or 6 packs of See's candy truffles. And if she was trying to reach an executive and couldn't reach them, she would mail that. She'd FedEx it so it didn't melt. And then she'd say, Hey, Shelly, we've been trying to get a hold of you. It's probably going to take you 5 to 10 minutes to enjoy these chocolates. And while you're doing it, why don't we have a conversation? Please give me a call. This is my direct number. And she said she, she had a pretty much an 8 out of 10, 9 out of 10 hit rate on that.

But see, the problem with me would be that I would have to listen to them eating chocolate while I'm talking to them.

I'm not sure I can do that.

You know, Unless I had my own box of chocolates, then it would be okay.

Well, if you buy 5, you buy a 6th one, and I'd get some more samples too.

That's great. Some free samples. Yeah, that's awesome. I like that. Let's talk a little bit about candidates now. You have a unique way to— that I think it's very valuable to share— to open up interviews with with candidates, and you told me that there's 2 questions that you always ask a candidate right up front on the first interview.

Yeah. So when I'm having my first call with them, what I'll usually do is I'll start with 2 questions. The first one is, you know, so shall we— before I get into my spiel or whatever, let me, let me turn this around. What can I answer for you about us? I mean, do you know about us? What do you know about us? What can I answer for you? And that normally helps start the conversation. It relaxes them a little bit. And the other thing that it tells me pretty quickly is a good amount of the time, the first couple of things they ask is— the first couple of questions they ask might be what are their motivations? I mean, if they ask about compensation, that's kind of easy. If they ask about how many projects do you have, what's your backlog? Okay, they're looking for some job security. And for each industry, you can learn what that is. And the second question I'll ask, I don't know if it's one we talked about, but I love an open-ended question that is just, so let's just say you're at Deloitte. So, Shelly, what the heck is going on at Deloitte? And it's real open-ended. I'm not asking for any— I'm not asking for you to disparage, but normally the person will say, well, you know, our group is— our group, you know, we're really not getting a lot of projects right now for some reason. I'm hearing rumors there might be a reorganization and we might be affected. So I think I better start, um, planting my seeds and tilling my soil now. I better start digging my well now before I'm thirsty.

Okay. All right.

Can we talk about a different question that I forgot about? Well, but see, and that's my point is when in this, for what I do and with the experience level we're at is I can draw, I can give you, we can both give each other, you know, a checklist of interview questions and that's fine. And it's linear and that's not a problem. What I've learned in many cases is my interview is I do have a list, but then all of a sudden they might say something else, or they might pause too long when I ask a question, or they might sigh a little bit.

That's an indicator of something, right?

And they might, yeah. And all of a sudden I go on a, I take that off-ramp. I'm like, okay, hold on.

We wanna, we wanna keep going. That's called active listening, by the way. That's active listening. It's a technique.

Well, I'm not gonna say what's on this, but on the other side, because I talk a lot, is STFU.

Wait, I can see, I can see that. Yeah, I can see it.

So, uh, it's shut the blank up and you talk too much, you talk too much and you never shut up.

So, um, that's a, you know, I like those two questions. I think the, the question of, um, the open-ended question about what do you want to know about us, I actually, that is how I start all of my interviews. And let me tell you the reason why I do it. It's a different reason, but I think it's the same outcome. Same kind of— and I think maybe I ask it a little bit different, but the reason I do it is I feel like it takes a lot of the edge off of like the, I'm selling you on an opportunity. It's a lot more about what do you want to know, as opposed to, um, let me tell you all about us and let me ask you a billion questions to find out all about you. It's, it's a, it's a third, right? Like, I'm not trying to find out about you I'm not trying to tell you about us. I want to know what you want to know about us. And it starts that way. And believe it or not, it doesn't take that long for them to ask a couple of good questions. 5 minutes, maybe 10 minutes. It might be a little bit longer. And then at the end of that, the ice has been thoroughly melted and I can then— I feel like I can ask them just about anything at that point. So it's— to me, it's basically an icebreaker. Now you have a little bit of a different reason for it, But for me, it's a way to get to soften them up so that I can then ask some pretty important questions. And one of the most difficult situations that I run into with my team is they very frequently with higher-level candidates, a higher level in compensation, you know, past six figures, they very frequently get objections from the candidate regarding disclosing their target comp. So when my team is, asking them, what kind of compensation are you looking for? Often they run into candidates who are very reticent to actually say that, to say, and mind you, we are not asking, 'cause it's illegal in many states, how much are you making? We're asking, what is your target? What do you want to make?

Right?

So when I use this technique, I feel like I get to the point where I ask that question and they're a lot more willing to tell me. That. How do you handle— I guess the question I have for you is when you're asking a candidate what their target compensation is and him and Hall are like, well, you know, I'm negotiable, but how do you get through that? Because you can't put a candidate forward to a hiring manager without knowing what their target is.

Well, sometimes I will, but if we have, if like you said, if we've thoroughly broken the ice and I think we've got a good rapport, I'll usually save it to one of my last questions and I'll just— I'll be very candid.

Sure. Yeah, it definitely is. Absolutely. I agree with that. But like, they object anyway. Even, you know, sometimes they object.

I'll say, look, Shelly, I don't want to waste anybody's time. And, you know, and I'll tell them a couple of stories that were true. When people said, um, they didn't give me their stuff. I said, look, I'll tell you what's going to happen because you're, you're, you're experienced. What's going to happen is, um, we're all going to fall in love and you're going to be expecting Morton's Steakhouse and all I got is In-N-Out Burger for you, man, and I don't want to waste your time. And, and on the other side of that, um, do you realize that there is a relevant range? We all know this. Every general contractor does compensate differently. They do. So I just want to see variations.

Yeah.

Are we on the same page? Because now— and it also depends on the person. Sometimes I'll say, look, I want you to talk to this, this person first if I don't have their comp. And there's other times where I'll say, look, you know, I— we're not all about the money here. I'm not going to deny money is important, but we have a relevant range. And if, and if we can't have this conversation I— dude, I can't, I can't even move forward. I can't move forward. And I'd say I have that happen 1 out of 100 times, maybe.

And yeah, no, I'm glad, I'm glad that we're addressing this because it's, it's not like this is a complete roadblock. It's just, it happens with enough frequency that, um, it's, it's a, it's a topic of conversation in our weekly huddles, maybe every other week. Where somebody will bring up, bring it up as well. I was talking to this candidate and they just were really actively refusing to give me a range. And, you know, so it happens less with me because of that icebreaker. I think maybe the icebreaker is part of it. I like what you're saying. I also had one of the, one of the team members that has a lot of experience with executive recruiting and talking about comp with, you know, insensitive situations. He said that one of the techniques that he uses is more along the way, along the lines of, it's not that trying to negotiate compensation right now, it's I need to understand what is going to motivate you. What would you, what would motivate you to make a change. Otherwise, it's not worth having the conversation, right? So, and this, this kind of works with passive candidates. Active candidates is a little bit different because if somebody has applied for the job and perhaps they are not working right now, it's— they're first of all, a lot more likely to tell you what their target is, but it's not as difficult to get them to, to, you know, reveal that. With a passive candidate, that's almost like, look, I know you're working right now and you're making money. We called you. We're— I'm not saying that this is what we tell them, but in my mind I'm thinking, yeah, we called you. So it's— there's got to be something that motivates you to leave. And I know it's not all about the money, but if I offered you, you know, an amount of money that's going to be well below what you're making right now, the whole thing is going to make no sense. So I need to know what that is. And so that's kind of another way to handle it, right?

Yeah, true story though. And this is where the people business of our business is. So many, many years ago, and this company shall remain unnamed, they built this whole 45-minute, 60-minute ask questions. It was an executive search firm. It was this really bad, you know, badass program. And when it was done, it shot you the results and said, hey, congratulations, based on all the information you gave us, you should be making X. And the funny thing is, we heard that a lot of the executives that were like, oh yes, I want to see what this company thinks of me, blah blah blah. And it was all of a sudden it goes, congratulations, your base should be $400,000, $500,000. And the guy's like, I'm at $800,000. What the hell is your system talking about? So this is where the human part of what we do is important. To your point, and I understand there's various ways to approach it. One of the ways I do it is, and I do it this way, is, you know, we've got Post-it notes here. And I learned a long time ago when hiring managers, you show them the resume, you talk a little bit, what are they making? Well, they're making $150,000. I'm not interested. So I go, you know, so what I tell the candidate, which is what I do, is I say, look, we need to talk about the comp because you're here. Look, I can't put you forward and tell that, but let me tell you what we're going to do, and I'm going to tell you my why. I'm going to write it down on a Post-it note. When we're done with this conversation, I'm going to throw that Post-it note away. When the manager asks— if, if the person I give your information to says, what's he making? My response is going to be, you know what, I don't have that written down anywhere. Now That's a true statement. It's a little squirrely, but it's a true statement because I don't have it written down. And that helps relax them a little bit. And sometimes at that point they'll open up.

That's a good one. I don't have that written down anywhere. Yeah, I thought I wrote it down, but I don't think I have it anywhere.

Well, because, because how many times, how many times have we had a great candidate, you know, the hiring manager is going to is going to complain about the pricing. It's like, let them fall in love.

Yeah, no, and I'm not asking because I want to preempt anything. It's just that I know that I'm going to introduce them, hiring manager is going to want to meet with them because they look good and I'm recommending them, so they're going to want to have a conversation. Then they're going to get to the conversation and at some point it's going to come up. Um, and I certainly don't want there to be some kind of complete mismatch where Now both the candidate and the hiring manager are gonna look at me and go, why did you make this connection? It doesn't make any sense. I gotta tell you though, this is hilarious. I think I talked about this on another episode. I had a candidate, well, actually, you know what? They were a prospect that never became a candidate and this is why. I messaged them, they had expressed interest in a position 3 or 4 years ago at this company. And I messaged them basically something to the effect of, Hey, I know you applied for a role here. You might not remember, but it was, you know, October of whatever. And I just came across your resume in our system and I thought I would reach out and find out if, you know, you might be interested in reconsidering. You know, I don't know what happened. I don't have any notes on if you guys ever interviewed anywhere or whatever, but I'd love to see if you might reconsider. And the candidate, sorry, the prospect replied back This is the length of the message was, well, I'm currently making $386,000, so unless you can beat that, I don't want to talk. And I was like, hmm, let's say that I could beat that. Like, I'm thinking to myself, let's say that I could beat that because I possibly could. Let's say that I could beat that. And now I don't want to, right? Like, I, because that, because that's, if, if that's all you care about, if you don't care about what we are, who we are, what we do, the company, the product, the people. If all you care about is me beating that number, I can, I can beat that by 1 penny or $1, right? Or whatever. And like, really, is that really what matters to you? If it is, now, now you could say that another way. You could say, well, I've got a target in mind, or, yeah, you know, is this— is the compensation reasonable within range of whatever? But like, that was, it was like, if you can't do this, then I'm not interested. And I'm thinking to myself, I would have talked to you at that range, maybe, possibly, possibly not. Thank you for the candor. But what I'm not interested in is, is that being the very first thing that you want to talk about. Oh no, I just don't like it.

No, totally. Now, so my, what my favorites is, not at a past company, I was, I was hiring for a very specific position. And I found the candidate. Somebody had referred a second, another candidate. That second person was not qualified. I mean, they, they were, they were, they still did business. They still did the title, but in the niche they needed to do, they weren't. So, but I screened them, blah, blah, blah. They interviewed, they got through the interview cycle, and everybody looked like they were getting serious. And I said, if you're only hiring one person, you need to hire person A. They have the skill, they have the background, and they have the niche you want. This other person, if you're going to hire them, they're going to be a generalist. And they are— and I am not endorsing— if you're only hiring one, I'm not endorsing. But if you want to hire two, feel free. Okay.

Okay.

When we were negotiating salary with candidate number two, he would never tell me He would never say anything. I said, give me your yes number, lie to me and make something up, and all the other things we do. And they hired them both, and the second person washed out after about a year, year and a half.

The no number one?

What?

No number one? The one that— yeah, okay.

So then we're in a meeting and somebody goes, well, by the way, you know, Bob left us. I'm like, Yeah, I know.

Called it. You're like, I figured that one.

But before that, the person goes, well, you know, how did he, how did he fail? How did, how did you fail to screen him properly? I said, whoa, I got all the emails. Wasn't my candidate, wasn't my recommendation. And I've even got the emails to you guys saying, I don't think this is a person we should hire. So let's not go there. And they're like, what do you mean? And I'm like, let me pull up a long email for you from a year and a half ago.

Yeah, the one that said don't hire this one.

Yeah, right. Because it was just like, you know, I said, don't you guys remember that even when we were negotiating the offer, you guys got upset because of the back and forth, and you came into my office and said, here's the number, that's the number, and you tell him that if he doesn't want to consider that, we're not going to update it and we're done. And then he accepted. So just in the process, didn't we learn something? We did.

Yeah, that's my point about this. Yeah, this like, uh, here's my number up front, like beat that, you know, like there's another way to say that that doesn't—

yeah, there's 50 ways.

Yeah, there's a lot of ways. Yeah, that's a good point. So, um, I, I know I've kept you a little bit more than I promised I would keep. I don't actually have to— I have to ask you this. This is my last question I have to ask you, and this is a controversial one, so I'm glad I'm leaving it to the end when I think a lot of people are probably starting to bail out. You say that recruiters should stop telling hiring managers every candidate is a rock star.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Now, I agree with that. I don't think any candidate is a rock star until after we've interviewed them, by the way. So I've got a paragraph that I write, 2, 3 sentences that I write, and I tell everybody on my team to make sure that you pitch the candidate based on here's what the requirements say. And you know, here's what you're expecting, here's what they can do, here's why it's a match. It's a logical case of this is why this person, you know, is qualified for the role. It may not be on their resume, it may be based on a conversation we had, but I totally agree with you. However, I wanna hear your reasoning behind why we should stop saying any candidate is a rock star unless they maybe really are a rock star, as in like they get on stage and they play the guitar and, Right. 300,000 people stand up and applaud. Tell me about that.

So I started doing this many years ago just because I thought it was the right thing to do. I had built a lot of, you know, we've all built teams, we've all placed people into teams, and I just started doing it. But the reason is, and I was actually given a really good piece of advice from a client when I had my, when I was at an agency or in mine, And they said, Alan, you know, I'd really appreciate if you could give me a candid, your candid opinion of the person. I'm still gonna interview them, but you know, we've got Jessica and Kimberly and they're extremely good. So benchmark your candidates against those two and let me know. It's okay, it's okay if they're junior or mid-level to those two, but let me know. And here's the thing is, We always appreciate being respected by hiring managers, and hiring managers over time, from a lot of the poor agency, external, the poor agencies, every candidate's a rock star, every candidate you've got to talk to today. But if you go to your manager and say, hey, here's Bob, I talked with him, I think he's a good project manager, but he's been a project manager for quite some time, here's what he's worked on, I think he's a, a good solid project manager. If you're looking for this next person to become a senior project manager to a project director to potentially a project executive, I'm not sure Bob's that person, but I still think he's a solid doer.

You do the job now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That makes sense.

And you need a mix of people.

You do, it's a reasonable, it's a reasonable, you're making a case for why this candidate should be hired. If you believe this candidate should be hired, which is your job and it's your value add as a recruiter to essentially evaluate a candidate and present them as a potential hire. So you wouldn't be forwarding them to the hiring manager or moving them forward or whatever you wanna call it if you didn't believe this candidate could do the job. So you're logically explaining this candidate can do the job, but you don't have to oversell them. It doesn't benefit anybody to oversell them.

Well, and also in the other direction, it does help build tremendous credibility if you— and this will be my last quick story— many, many years ago, I built a team in energy deregulation. I had a candidate and there was, you know, when you have a candidate, you can't put your finger on it, but there's just something that's not right. And so I went to the vice president at the client who I placed and I said, Here's a resume with a big red mark through it. I said, there's something there, but his resume looked good. But I said, look, there's something not right here. I wanna give you this resume. I am not presenting him as a candidate. I'm letting you know. And the VP said, oh, we're hiring. He starts Monday through recruiting agency X. And I said, Jim, I'm just letting you know there's something that's not right. Anyway, so about 2 months go by and I get a call from the HR people at this company at about 7 at night on a Friday. Remember we interviewed Shelly? I'm like, oh yeah. Well, has he found a new con— got a new situation? Well, we're supposed to have him— he's supposed to start interviewing over here at JPL on Tuesday, but no, right now he's fine. Well, We'd be interested. Could he start? And like, start? Well, yeah, we interviewed him. I mean, we just went with somebody else, but could he start? I'm like, okay. Well, could you call him right now and get back to me? Like, okay. So I'd already placed many of these people. So I got on the phone and I called Glenn in that was, was, was there. I said, Glenn, what the heck is going on? He goes, oh yeah, you know that guy we heard about 2 months ago? He was a true hacker. He, he's got energy trading. He's got— he, he took all this, he copied all this software. We don't, we don't, we can't even get into these systems right now. We need somebody to get into his world and stop the damn— just fix it. And I'm like, oh. So I called HR back and they said, uh, I said, well, I talked to— I talked to Shelly, he is available. I go, well, could he start— could he do a contract to perm? Because he could start as a contractor Yeah, he's open to that. Um, like what, a week from Monday? He goes, well, you know, we are 24/7. I'm like, what are we talking about here? He goes, when could he be here? Today? Tomorrow?

Well, like right now.

Tonight. So I said, okay, I'll make you a deal. Your place is 20 minutes from me. I'm gonna drive over. I'm gonna have all the documentation. You sign it. I'll call Shelly back. Shelly showed up at 2:30 AM on Saturday morning and started digging in, was on a contract for about 3 months and got hired perm and fixed everything. But that started because another recruiter didn't do their due diligence or didn't come and say, here's, here's a candidate. And either I really like them, I endorse them, I think they're pretty good. I think, I think they'd be a fit with our culture and I think we should talk to them. And the rare occasion, I can't put my finger on it, but there's something wrong. You will build your credibility and respect.

That's right. Yeah, because it's— look, it's our value. We are adding on. If all we do is just take a resume off of a web page and slap it into a rank and then that's it, I mean, then there's no value add. Part of our value is that we're helping managers make decisions. We're not You know, we're not just throwing paper at them. We're not just building a funnel. We are helping them make decisions. Sometimes one of my biggest pet peeves with the whole submittal, hiring manager accept kind of process is that sometimes we do our job when we provide an option, even if that option isn't the one that gets hired. In other words, the hiring manager has to make a choice. They have one candidate right now. We do our best in providing them a second candidate so at least they have a choice.

Yes.

And that's still our job, even if they didn't take that second candidate. Right. But now they have a comparison and can make a good decision. And before they didn't. So I think that's, that's our most important value.

It's also when you have a relationship, whether an external or an internal, and you really understand what's needed That same company, different position. They needed someone to lead the 24/7 help desk for their customers. And we'd gotten a few people, and I finally brought a couple other candidates. I said, you need to talk to Linda. And he looked, he goes, Alan, what the heck? She's got some of the technical, but you know what you need? You need a dead mother, because you've got these people from— you've hired— many of your hires have been from 3 big energy companies. You've got 3 conflicting cultures here and nobody's talking. She can build this, but you need someone that's a communicator and a collaborator. I said, you, you, you interview all 3 of these people. So they all interviewed. Linda was interviewing. I still remember at 2 PM, she was done at 3, she about 3:05, my phone goes off and Linda goes, Hey, I really appreciate it. Thank you. I really enjoyed meeting Jim. I, you know, I don't know if I'll get the job, but it really seems like a really cool challenge. And my office phone rang and I said, hold on a second. So I pick it up and it's Jim. He goes, hire her now. And the mother comes in and she did phenomenal work. So listen to your company, observe your company, listen to your people, look at the culture, look at the fit, because you may bring a person that on paper technically might not look, but they fit a lot of other criteria.

That's right, that's the value-add. Yeah. Well, hey, listen, man, thanks for being a guest today. I really appreciate all the, uh, the sage advice.

This was fun, man.

Yeah, hey, that's the best time, right? When it's fun and it's valuable. That's, that's the double whammy right there.

Yeah, this is great. I appreciate the questions and everybody listening. Hey, thanks for listening, much appreciated.

All right, any closing words for everybody before we clock out?

Hey, it's Friday. I never miss watching one of these, and you know, because it's Friday, I know most of the recruiters here are going to be buried after 2 or 3 PM when everybody makes their decisions. Take a deep breath. It's a good nightmare to have.

That's right, it's a good problem to have, and get through it.

All right, have a great weekend, everybody.

Thanks, everybody.

Bye.