Angel Alexander Live on Shally's Alley

Hey party people, welcome to Live on Shelly's Alley. That's right, you are live, you are alive, and this is live. And it is October 3rd. I think that means officially the beginning of fall, I hope, because man, I could not wait for summer to be over. I am so done with that. Summer is dead to me. And even though it's not gotten that much cooler The leaves are starting to fall and it's pretty. And so here we are, live on Shelly's Alley, October 3rd. I'd like to welcome our guest today. We've never met. This is literally the first time that we're meeting. And as I— you all know, I ask people for a recommendation on who else should be on the show. And that is somebody immediately said, oh, I know who you need to have on the show. You need to invite Angel. And I was like, all right. Um, I sent her a message and she said, yeah, sure. I'd love to. And so here we are. Um, I was, uh, you were recommended. How does that feel? You like that?

Yeah, I actually do. I'm thankful for the individuals who did.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, that was great. So a little bit about our guest today. Um, they're from— you're in Florida, right? Just want to make sure I got that right.

Yes.

Yep, not too far from where I— my neck of the woods up here. Um, so you, uh, were— you're the founder of, uh, Unplugged Connect, a movement that sparks deeper connection in an increasingly digital world. Um, been working for about 8 years in, in building high-performing recruiting teams and leading diversity strategies and negotiating offers. Uh, you said you've, uh, you've negotiated more than 10,000 offers.

Yeah.

In the corporate, government, and tech sectors at Randstad, at Manpower, Huntington National Bank. Um, so kind of data-driven with a people-first and connection policy type of background and scaling, right? Is that it?

That is correct. That is correct.

Cool, cool, cool. So we want to talk about today why, um, why recruiters should think more like, like architects, like workforce architects, and along the ways, you know, explore your ideas on the future of, of connection Right. So as a kind of a way to kind of get things started, your background, your career shows a pretty unique blend. I'd say rare blend of high-volume recruiting, you know, from like major partners like Randstad and Manpower, RPOs, and, you know, high volumes. You've also done strategy and you've also done people-first leadership. And those are three, you know, different worlds really. I mean, high volume is very transactional, very churn. Strategy, very, you know, thought-intensive and future-driven, as opposed to transactional, like what do we need today, like literally in the next hour. You've trained national teams. You've done lots of negotiations. And you said you created a card game.

Yeah, I have.

I have. All of this is not a typical TA path. Tie this together for me.

Yeah. So to give you a quick rundown, before TA, I was a therapist. So I did— I was a therapist for over 5 years traveling with a traveling therapist.

Wow.

I was with NAMI. So I worked a lot with mental health, and it led me into the workplace because I noticed that a lot of individuals were having a lot of issues in the workplace. I thought about switching career paths and really getting ahead of the game. When it came to mental health, which led me into TA because I thought if I interacted with the individuals ahead of time and start building those relationships, we can find additional resources within the companies so individuals can be just overall well-rounded in their role. And I fell in love with TA and I stayed in TA and here I am now working with Huntington Bank. I am the founder of Unplug Connect and it's a about building authentic relationships in the corporate space, at home, just so the individual can just be their full selves all throughout. And I'm, yeah, and I'm super excited about chatting with you today.

Wow. So, you know, I— people ask me when they're exploring the opportunity of becoming a recruiter, and I used to— I had a— for many, many years, I ran a nonprofit, a 501(c)(3) to get people into recruiting from displaced, you know, people with disabilities, blind and hearing impaired, deaf and hard of hearing and all that. And I got asked a lot, you know, what does a recruiter do with Dayton Life? And I actually describe it a little bit as it's, it's like you're part project manager, you're part negotiator, you're part diplomat, and you're also part therapist.

Yeah.

Yeah. And like, you kind of like, you know, because you do talk to people that are— they've had a hard time with switching careers, they're having a hard time finding a job, they're having a hard time at their job. You know, it's just like, you know, job satisfaction is a huge part of— even if you don't live to work, even if you just, you know, work for the paycheck, it's still a big part of your life, even if you don't— you try to not let it get to you. So yeah, the part therapist is sometimes you just have to— you have to address that human side of it. You can't just, you know, transactionalize it to the nth degree. So what, what is the card game exactly? Like, how do you play it? So, yes.

Yeah. So bring it.

Can we play it now?

So Unplug Connect, it is a card game. It typically can range from 1 person to 6 people. I typically tell people it's really great to have it with somebody that you really trust because it's going to go past that superficial level of knowing someone. I tell people all the time, when it comes to building authentic relationships and being a partner, whether in the workplace or you're at home, you have to hit the rough patches of who a person is to be able to truly understand who they are. The card game really structures around very hard questions that a lot of people try to navigate away from. The individual can start thinking in a strategic way of why certain things in their lives are a certain way and how they can navigate to be better. One example, I have a friendship deck and it's just really about really showing up for a friend in a way that they need it, not the way that we perceive it or that we think we should.

Right.

And even in the workplace, we have so many different personalities and a lot of people think, oh, if I communicate with them the way that I prefer, it will work that way and it doesn't. So it's like finding those different ways to have those conversations with getting to know someone so we can maneuver a little bit better. And that we can— so it's, it's those type of questions. They're typically between 120 and 160 different cards in 6 categories, focusing on different, different, just different parts of a life and how we can combine. And I'm super excited because it is— I either have one for parent and child, friends. Oh wow, it's structured regarding that, but it's different questions. So a question would be And one is, how do you show your grace when you hit failure? When you see failure in your life, how do you show yourself grace? Right. And knowing how a person shows grace to themselves, whether they do or they don't, the individual can be able to navigate that as a friend or a colleague. Or how do you show up when, you know, a colleague that was a top performer started to pull back? You know, how do you be feeling like you're pushing too much? Just different type of questions like those that make people think, how can I show up for an individual? And especially with— I am a mother too. I have a 17-year-old son. It's just really great to start to learn how to have those conversations so we could just be well-rounded in general. A lot of us think to separate the relationships, but in reality, they all combine. Trauma can trigger, and if you're in a workplace, it'll carry over.

You can try to isolate. And some people may be pretty good at, you know, kind of, I don't know, compartmentalizing, or what the word is. But yeah, it doesn't really— yeah, yeah, it rolls over when it's tough to have a bad day at home and then, you know, try to— yeah, or, or vice versa, to have a bad day at work and then try not to be at home, you know.

And I can— I'll just speak from my own personal experience. Like, when I was a therapist and I worked for NAMI, I worked with a lot of doctors and a lot of officers, and Speaking about suicide ideation, a lot of that did transfer into my personal life to where I gave so much where I was depleted when I came home. So I couldn't give like that emotional full capacity as a mother or a partner because it was already depleted for me, giving it out to so many individuals. So even though we can compartmentalize and be able to lead in different directions, it still slowly starts to bleed in other areas. If we do not try to get ahead of it. And working in, now working in the corporate space and working under different sectors and working with different partners, it really matters because those triggers show up in different ways. And if you don't understand that somebody may have a trigger based off of a simple email that you send out, or if you're interviewing a candidate and you're responding a certain way, certain triggers can arise regarding that. So the Unplug Connect is really just to understand the mindset and a different perspective. I know you spoke about earlier about just being that architect. And as a consultant or recruiter, you have to have that mindset where you look at different avenues, not just screening someone and seeing if they're a good fit, but looking at it from a personality perspective, a culture perspective, so you can really get a full understanding of that individual. So when you present them to a leader, they have a full grasp of who this individual is, not just their qualifications, but the things that's beyond them. And I always tell people, The best way to know someone is to ask those questions, to get to know them, have a natural conversation, talk to them like they're your friend, and you get to really see more of their personality when you're interviewing them. You get to see more of their personality when you're asking those more deeper level questions, whether it's happy— I mean, how many kids you have, you have a cat, or things like that. You get to get a full understanding of who they are so you can see what type of employee or partner.

All right, well, that's quite the trajectory. Um, Pretty, uh, pretty interesting way. I honestly can't say I've actually met anybody that used to be a therapist and got into recruiting. Um, I'm sure there are many others, or, you know, it can't be that unusual. Um, but, um, but that's quite the path. So you manage some pretty large teams. You had 35, 36 recruiters. And one of the things I've personally run into when managing large teams, first of all, I've managed both large teams of direct reports and also managers of managers. So like, I've directly managed individual contributors. I think the largest team that I ever managed directly was 23 people that reported to me, which, that's insane, by the way. That's a lot of people. Yeah. And I've also managed or led, you know, I've been a leader of leaders, right? So leaders that have people that, you know, report to them that are individual contributors. And between those two, there's a big difference. But when you have a large team of direct reports, that's what I want to hone in on. If you have more than 6 or 8 direct individual contributors, how do you balance the pressure of the metrics and the justification and the volume in this kind of, you know, what you're describing? I mean, this sort of— not sort of— this people-first, uh, connection setting that you, that you like to build, uh, how does that— can— how do you deal with the two distinct goals, right?

Yes, yes. So one thing that I tried to— when I was leading my team of 36 recruiters, um, the first thing I did was do a personal interview for every last one to really understand how they operate? Yes, I use Crystal Knows. It's a quick summary, gives you who they are, and I was able to see how they communicated, how, you know, best preferred ways to email them, things like that. So I put together like this real customized chart. I love Excel. Excel was like my, like my best friend. So I put together like this really detailed chart about who they are, and then when I started working with them in regards to our client base, because I had two clients at the time that I was supporting, I was able to help navigate their metrics regarding that and have those conversations. When it first— when I first started with them, it was very rough for them. I'll be very honest because they wasn't used to a very hands-on leader. I also believe in having a more of an open policy when it comes to development so they can try things their own way to figure out what works for them. The best thing was giving them that space to make mistakes and figure figure it out, but also be there with them. So if they hit a rough patch, I walk them through it. I was there with them like I was the recruiter myself. And it really helped get my team together very quickly, extremely quickly, as well as my leaders. I was able then, they were able to trust me and I was able to start challenging their norm when it came to increasing their volume and what that looks like. So their volume was, I submitted 4 applicants this week. I'm like, hey, let's look at some numbers. I'm very metrics driven. Let's look at some numbers to see what we can do to increase that so you can really show yourself in the workplace as an employee. I also found out what their passions was inside and outside of the workplace. A lot of times, a lot of leaders just focus on inside of the workplace. I don't because there's something that we like that I can help pull to help develop them even further. I allowed them to take on leadership responsibilities from time to time, leading our weekly huddles, reviewing numbers, giving recognitions. And that really helped with me being able to balance them while also being able to offer my, my employees. So that was extremely beneficial, really getting to know them. But the first month of me taking on the project, I really just spent time getting to know them without the numbers, just really seeing what they were looking at. If they had previous PIPs, reviewing what those look like, where were the hiccups at? Asking those questions from their perspective, which gave me better insight into—

I had a mentor long ago that, um, corrected me once, and it sort of stuck with me, um, that I— it was— I made a comment in a conversation. I was like, you know, it's, it's business, not personal, um, because it was somebody taking something personally, right? And I'm like, but it's business, not personal. And, and so my mentor was like, you know, All business is personal. They were like, business is personal. You can't say it's business, it's not personal because for a lot of people, for most people, business is personal, especially if you're invested. If you care about your company, it's personal. If you're invested in your job, it's personal. If you're invested in your career, it's personal. So for it to not be personal, it would have to be someone who doesn't care about their employer, doesn't care about their job, doesn't care about their career. And that's not normal, common. I mean, you have to be really disengaged. We even talk about like quiet quitting and all that stuff nowadays because people are so disengaged that when this happens, yeah, it's not personal anymore, but then are they even showing up? You know, like it's kind of like at that point. So yeah, I totally get it. You've talked a little bit about kind of understanding the whole, if you will. But you also have worked with policy, and especially nowadays where, you know, DEI is among some circles starting to become a bad word, and people are deleting their DEI policies and stuff like that, which is what— I mean, I'm just sitting back going, what? But you've actually moved policy into practice and progress. And so sometimes You know, I think one of the mistakes that, that— and I've talked about this on the show a few times with, with different kinds of leaders in, in the DEI space and in TA consulting and stuff like that— where I think leaders can tend to make the mistake of like enforcing a policy for the sake of the policy. And that is, that is actually what's— what went wrong with DEI was when it was enforced as a policy, when it was like a police thing. Like You became, you know, as if HR is not bad enough with all the things that they have to police. Now, you know, and again, another thing. So if you made it that, it was a policy, but it wasn't a plan. You've actually turned it into—

Versus human experience.

So what's the biggest mistake that you think leaders make, or you see leaders make when they're trying to drive, let's call it inclusion? And what's the redirect?

That's a really great question, and I have multiple ways to even answer that. When you're thinking from the top-down approach and you're dealing with a lot of leaders that have that particular mindset, just focused on numbers and getting the numbers for the government, their perspective of policy looks completely different from people that are actually in it, living it, and working it. The biggest thing of how we navigated that with the multiple partners that I had was literally leading by people first and not looking at, oh, am I hitting a certain metric for the government? It's really still about finding the right applicant for the company culturally and qualification-wise, but it was also allowing individuals to see that there's multiple different people on a growth panel. Where they can grow. So I know for my company now, D&I is extremely still big for us. It's still a part of our company because that's what our footprint is. We are a people-led bank and we believe in putting people first. So that means individuals of all different walks of life. So when you really lead with that initiative and not just, oh, because it's D&I, we're literally giving everybody the opportunity to show themselves and show up fully. Shows the whole perspective of D&I. And I tell people all the time, and when you— if you really want to know, and this is going to be very contradictory to say working in HR, there's different companies who truly live by D&I without the policy. And then there's some that only did it because of the policy, because it was in place. And working— when you work for the government and you work it at a higher scale, you do have to meet certain metrics to get—

well, yeah, I mean, the point at which you have to like You know, provide evidence that you've done it, and so there's proof. But when it becomes— when the— when the— it's the incentive, I think, is what it comes down to, right? If you incentivize a bunch of recruiters to make phone calls and you're measuring them by the numbers of calls they make, they'll make a lot of calls. It doesn't matter if they turn into hires because you're measuring them on the calls. So it really doesn't matter. Yeah. Whether it's diversity or any subject matter, if you're enforcing the KPIs for the sake of the numbers, then you're losing track of the objective. You have to kind of— I guess I'm trying to phrase this in a better way— you, you, you have to focus on the outcome, and then how does the outcome— yeah, how did you meet that outcome with your activity, but not manage to the activity, because then you're managing to the KPIs, not to the algorithm. Yeah.

And it goes back to that human experience. If I'm going to show up and I'm going to interview applicants, it's just showing the best of the company and giving the pros and cons. You're going to get well individuals, well-qualified individuals.

So your redirect is to focus—

and that's what a lot of—

now focus on the, the way to do it, the connection by example, and, and then with an eye for tracking the metrics, but The redirect is don't worry as much about the metrics as you do about the outcomes. Okay, got it. That makes sense.

Because it brings— when you're more authentic, when you're more people-led driven, you're going to get diversity because they see the truth. They feel like they can be seen, they feel they can be heard. And by me doing that practice of interviewing all, I've always my numbers of diversity was always high because of that, because I spoke about all different things. I also became an advocate for areas that I was weak in, right? Speaking with individuals living with a disability, that's a huge factor right now for a lot of companies trying to find the great individuals who they can coach and develop or bring into different roles, giving them that space and showing, just showing up in a way that they need to show up. So when you present them, they can fully show themselves. And you, the more you just lead with grace and lead with different understanding, I always—

there you go, you're back. You're mute, got muted for a second there. Still there? Did we lose you? Folks, I don't know if we completely lost contact here or Or what? Let me see if I can try on LinkedIn and connect there. Okay, yeah, no, she's still online. Can you hear us? We'll give it a minute. Hopefully she'll come back. In the meantime, let me tell you about AI browsers. While we have this chance, here is an opportunity for you to do yourself a favor and download my free— this is free, I'm not selling you anything. It's a free guide on AI browsers for talent acquisition. It's basically, you know, make yourself automation, agentic browsers that are anywhere from free to, you know, $20 a month that you can use to run some of the heavy lifting behind the scenes while you're focusing on other activities. So true agentic browsers, but you need to know about the governance, what they can do, when they can't do. So scan this QR code, or if you are not near a QR codable situation, then the other place you can do it is just simply go to tsiuniversity.com/free-toolkit. Again, just sign up email address and it'll email you the PDF. It's a big document and there's a lot of information in there, so I didn't want to just kind of put it out there willy-nilly. I wanted people to be able to get access to it privately, and that way you can also message me if you have any questions. So with that said— oh, looks like we have her back! And welcome back! Hey, how's it going?

Thank you, thank you. For some reason it just dropped.

Yeah, sorry about that. It doesn't usually happen.

No worries, but I'm still here. But, um, I know that we were chatting and I was speaking about just leading with the level of empathy and understanding when you're interviewing. And when you focus on that, you bring the right talent. The right talent comes. That increases your numbers versus it being, oh, because of policy.

Yeah, focus on the outcome. What's, what's your outcome? Yeah, I like that. So you've built pipelines through community partnerships and through corporate strategy. What, which, which approach has been most underestimated by leaders, the community partnership or the corporate strategy?

I would say community, the community output. A lot of individuals, when you're thinking about top-down, they don't really think about the powerful impact of what that entails, especially when you focus on community. But when you focus on community, it expands and it's more of a word of mouth. And people start to believe word of mouth over a corporate strategy or what that looks like. So people want to know, especially now into 2025, they want to see what you're doing for the community. They want to see how you're interacting with the community, not the other way around. And it's building more trust that way, which opens up expansion. So I would say the community outreach— some, a lot of TA leaders understand the community outreach input. And what they underestimate it, they underestimate a lot of other leaders. They think if I do a more broader expansion, the better. And it could be better depending on certain parts. Like if you're thinking about commercial lending, things like that is better. But when you're talking about the people aspect and you want to reach the people, community is so much more impactful. We have especially— I'll just speak for just myself. For me, doing a lot of community outreach has opened up so many partners personally, being able to find more mentors. I was able to engage where people were like, hey, I have applicants for you, where I didn't have to do additional sourcing because people knew how much it meant to me as an individual interviewing. But I got so many well-qualified people for multiple companies that I work for that it helped with my hiring process even quicker because of that. So people start to trust that process just a little bit more differently because you're reaching out in ways that A lot of people don't, you know, you're going into the community to be able to engage them versus them coming to you.

Yeah, so yeah, I have a lot of experience with grassroots, um, and it definitely— in my experience, when you get it right, grassroots has a much more lasting effect. In a lot of ways, very similar to sourcing. When you do sourcing right, there's a long tail. Sourcing that's done, that's executed properly, has advantages from competitive intelligence to talent pipeline to just reputation management and all kinds of things. When it's done wrong though, sourcing can be very transactional and damaging. And the same thing with grassroots outreach. If you're not doing it right, it can burn you. Here's the thing though. The number one key to both is, from a grassroots point of view, is understanding what they need. Like, for example, this is something that I ran into myself. We had budget at this company to spend on an outreach program, and in particular, this was Women Engineers. So WITI and a couple— there's a couple of societies and associations. Yeah, and they wanted to like the powers that be were like, let's have a meeting at our facility. We have this nice facility, we can host the meeting, and, you know, we've got great, a great catering service. So they're, you know, they'll see how cool we are and how big our building is and, and all this other stuff. And, you know, like, impress them with our, with our presence. And I'm like, sure, but what— so I see what we get from that, Yeah, what are they gonna get for that? Let's think for a minute. Not trying to be chauvinistic here at all, believe me, far from that. But a lot of times it turns out that women are the caregivers of the children.

It—

I'm not saying that that's the way it's supposed to be. I'm saying, you know, there should be— there should be equal, you know, equal weight carried here or whatever. I don't care, I'm not going to get into political debate, but the fact of the matter is If you look at the typical, you know, everyday working engineer who happens to also be a female, they also happen to be the ones that take care of the kids. They don't want to go to some— drive someplace far away to, you know, to do that. It's not exactly like— it really doesn't do very much. And do they really need another meal? I mean, if they're engineers, they're not having a hard time finding a meal for themselves, even if it's a good meal. So kind of like that, what does that really do? I said, well, why don't we— I, I told the boss, I'm like, why don't we ask them? Let's reach out to the chapters and say, hey yo, what do you guys need right now? Like, we wanted to host a meeting, but that's like X dollars. Like, I don't know, I'll just say $2,000. It was more than that, but it was $2,000. But we have this $2,000, like, we could do a meeting and, you know, host you guys, or we could do something else. What would you rather do? And they were like, well, we do actually have a hard time finding places to meet because not a lot— a lot of places charge us money. And I said, okay, well, we can provide the place to meet. And they said, yeah, but we don't really need meals, and we actually would rather meet in the morning on the way to work so we can go to the meeting and have the meeting and then go to work and finish out our day.

And we—

it doesn't— it disrupts our day the least. If we did, so they're like, what, could you just lend us your meeting room for an hour at 8 o'clock? And I'm like, yeah, we'll even provide coffee. And they're like, no, no, no, don't worry about it. Most of us already got coffee, but you know, like, just give us the meeting. We'll bring our own coffee. And, um, and then I'm like, well, what else do you need? And they said, well, we have a hard time finding people to present because not everybody likes to get on the stage, you know? And so I'm like, oh, all right. So we'll have a meeting room for you and we can get you a speaker. That'll do a, you know, whatever, 10, 15, 20-minute, you know, training or workshop on something that, you know, that you care about. And they loved that more. We did that several times and it cost— basically cost us nothing.

Pretty much. Yeah.

Um, and so then we took the money and used it to buy advertising, which for them was a distribution. So we actually did— we gave them the money and they sent out emails on our behalf, which got us a lot more traction. Then, you know, and that was just one example. And there's so many others. So with grassroots, it's like, if you, if you think you know what they want, they'll take, they'll take it because, hey, sure, we'll have a meeting at your facility, but really, we don't need the food. We don't need this. And we don't want it to be lunch. And we don't want to be happy hour because we don't want to encourage drinking. And like, and there are all these things like, you know, coffee in the morning is fine.

Yeah.

So if you don't nail that, then you just alienated that group.

And that is so true, but I also believe it goes back down to the first, what is my whole point of connecting with them?

What was the point of that, right? Exactly. Why are we reaching out to you in the first place? We're reaching out to you to let you know that we employ women who are engineers and we are a women-friendly workplace. This is not a, you know, workplace where you will be oogled at, or, you know, or yeah, we have safe parking, well-lit, we have escorts to the car if you need it, we have access to commutable, you know, transportation, all the things that anybody would want, male or female. It's a good place to work and you probably don't know about it. So that's really all we needed to know.

That's it. And if they lean more on— and I tell people, if a company leans more on its employees for new ideas, that's the best way to do so because you get the real information of what's important to them. And if it's important to a large group of people, more than likely it's more important to the more of the community as well that they're surrounded by. So having that open dialogue, asking what do they want, we do it a lot for a lot of our strategies, right? So when it comes to, I was supporting a strategy of the older BRGs and we were like, they were asking, well, what do you think they want? I'm like, did you ever ask the employees that we currently have what is it that they want? What do they need from us so they can feel supported? That's gonna open up expansion and no one never thought about that. It was a very simple question. We get into the root of it. And when we were able to set up those local, more cadence, kind of smaller groups, we're able to get a big broad of what they were looking for as a whole, which have increased our numbers for in the, in the Hispanic community because we asked directly what that is that they were looking for.

What do you want? What's going to help you? And what I like to draw like a Venn diagram, right? So start with what's the problem? What's, what are you solving for? Right? In this case, in the point of like community outreach for diversity. This was specifically gender-based initiatives where we wanted to increase applicant flow in, um, um, the female category, right? So it wasn't a problem, first of all, but that was the goal. So it's not like, oh God, we don't have any females. It was more like, we want to encourage that. So that was the goal. So we start with that, and I like to draw a Venn diagram where the other two circles of the Venn diagram are What do you need, as in, you know, the group, right? And what are we able to provide? So here's what we need, what do you need, and what can we provide? And if you like those three things, and you find in the middle that what we have that you want that we also want, then you got a grassroots program. Otherwise, you just got marketing.

Yeah, I think a lot of people don't truly understand what grassroots truly means. Sometimes they just think—

tell us, what does it mean? What does grassroots mean? Why don't you define that for us?

Is to me grassroots is beyond just connection, is really creating some type of transactional relationship that can help with expansion on both sides. It's also as well as connection on a deeper level, right? I can connect with you and say, like, hey, send me resumes. Doesn't mean that we have a real authentic, deepened connection where it's going to lead to hires. Right? You can send me resumes and I can look at them and just leave it there. But if I know, like, hey, Shelly sent these individuals here, I vetted out certain things, I know there's certain skills that we can use and have constantly have those dialogues and conversation now that we have a relationship. And then it's more, it's more deeper. Now I know, like, hey, this, like the University of Michigan, I'm just going to throw a random college. They have really skilled individuals due to their, their master's program. So we know that they have X, Y, and Z of what we look for. Now I know I can connect with their leaders, now I can connect with their teachers, now I can go inside of there and have more conversations to open up what it looks like. So our name is more big to them. Um, and it's, it's, that's how I look at it. It's really bringing something to the individual, not always getting something in return, because sometimes it can be on one side a little bit more while you build things up, but really going into to create a transformation. Yeah.

Um, on a deeper level, I, yes, I think I like to describe it as grassroots is bottom up, Like, that's why I'm thinking, I don't know if that's where it came from, but I'm thinking like the grass grows up, like it comes from the root. So bottom up is grassroots. Strategy is top down. It comes from, you know, the vision and then tries to read like, so the rain comes down and waters the grass, but the grass has to come up, right? That's kind of how I see it. So in my world or my version of it, I meet people where they are. So that's their neighborhood, their school, their community, whatever that means to them, because I don't want to dictate the community part of it, right? Their community could be— for some people, community is soccer. For other people, community is church. For some people, church is soccer. It, you know, it just— but that's not up to me for, for me to define. It's where is the community, and then meet them there instead of having them— again, don't get in the car to drive to our office unless you actually want that. Right? So meet them where they are in those hubs and then, um, start there, right? Like, first go there and then what do you need? And if at this point all they need is basically something to get started with, then we do that. It's the most basic, you know. I think one of the biggest success stories in the history of the world with grassroots has been RLFs, revolving loan funds. You know, you familiar with those?

Very similar.

So yeah, I mean, that's, that's something I had a lot of work experience with in my previous career. And basically what it is, it's, it's a small amount of money. It is money, but it isn't money that you give, because when you give money, there's the expectation that it's free money. Like, I got this money, I can do it. It's a loan, but it's a loan that has a condition. It's a loan that you don't have to pay back to me It's a loan that you have to pay back to the next person. So I give you, let's say, $100 in order for you to be able to buy something that you, let's say, a sewing machine. And then you buy the sewing machine for $100, make some dresses, sell them, and then you take that $100 and you give it to the next person who needs to buy an oven. And then they make bread, sell the, you see what I mean? So I never, I never supposedly get the $100 back because it gets passed from one to the other, and they then determine— the members determine who's the next person that gets it, you know. And so they just keep going that way. When they're paying back, they're not giving me back the money, they're investing in their community. And that really works because, uh, exactly what you said, you get people involved in what they care about. This is what that person wanted. They wanted to be a baker, they wanted to be a seamstress, they They wanted to be a, you know, whatever. That's what they wanted. They put themselves into it. And they also know that if they're successful, somebody else will be able to be successful because of their success. And that's very motivating versus go to the bank, get money, and then you have to pay it back. I mean, that's traditional, but it's not the same.

But it's more rewarding too, because you get—

way more rewarding. And it's only $100. You know what I mean? It's not $100 million. Now, yes, you do need the strategy where somebody comes in and says, y'all can't get us— you can't get an oven and you can't get a sewing machine because you don't have any electricity. So somebody's gonna have to go put it— put in power lines. Well, that's not at grassroots, you know. That's now we need to electrify, or yeah, you know. So carrying that over into talent acquisition, it's, are you trying to hire people, for example, in, um, you know, in a displaced community, and are you providing them housing because they've been displaced? Sure, you can hire all these people that got kicked out of their homes because of a natural disaster. Great recruiting opportunity, but where are they gonna live?

Yeah.

And so, you know, are you really— are you providing them jobs, providing them shelter, and then they can get back on their feet and get jobs? You see what I mean?

I'm so glad that you spoke on that because that's one thing that we train a lot of our leaders to to open up their mindset when they're interviewing applicants, right? So a biggest thing, the biggest thing that you may see in an interview process, if somebody come into an interview and they're not properly presented well, I'll give you an example of a previous manager that I had years ago. They interviewed this applicant, they're like, you know, this applicant is really strong and they have these things, but they came in with flip-flops. And I'm like, have you ever considered they may not have money? Have you considered that?

Could they be displaced?

Uh, areas that they may be in, that can be something that can be coached, that could be something that could be helped to help to scale them to the next one because they're going to say, you know what, somebody took a chance on me, I'm going to take a chance on someone else. And teaching a lot of my managers to have that open mindset and understanding that they're— they have hiring biases. We have over 15 hiring biases. I mean, making them well educated about those, it helps open up that up so they know, like, is this person displaced? Can I help them? Can I help coach this up? Because a lot of people can be coached and developed versus just looking at particular skill. And when you go with that type of mindset, it helps bring in really great applicants that have always been overlooked. A lot of people think they have to come fully presentable, and they don't have to. I say, hey, if you show up and you can show me you, and it's the real you, not a facade, just the real you, we can work with a lot of things. We can coach a lot of things. A lot of us start— had to start somewhere, right? When I started in Recruiting, I had to learn to switch from a therapist mindset to more of a consultative mindset. That means somebody had to walk me through what that looks like from an HR perspective, right? So just taking those time to be able to give people grace and understand from a different perspective really helped bring a lot of people, which can help increase retention and longevity within a workplace because they say, you know, this company really stood out to me. They really took a chance on me when others just toss me to the side. And then two, I always tell people, like managers in general, don't interview out, interview in. It switches your perspective with what qualities is very transferable, what competencies that they may have, versus weeding them out. Like, I'm just going to interview and see who can I weed out. No, see who we can weed in. Look at their strengths and weaknesses, weigh them out so you know how really great they are and what could be definitely coached, and then assess it in the next year. What has been increased? Look at some metrics, use those things. That can really help make an individual better.

Yeah, so that's a good one. I actually had a friend that did this where they were providing, um, uh, sorry, that we wear jackets, suit jackets. So they went to a, um, conference, a career show or career My current company, we have two different ways.

So we have an individual that cannot meet and attend our actual trainings. We do a virtual. We have them do a virtual where they don't have to commute further and they don't have to go to our training lab. So it's literally meeting them where they're at, especially if they're honest and say, hey, I can't. But we know that they could be a really great employee. Let's do it.

I would if I could.

Right. You can get there and then if we can adjust it, then we can adjust it. But as of right now, let's meet virtually. At the— actually, you know, at your branch, wherever your headquarters, whatever that may look like, so you can still get that experience with your team.

Yeah, I got a doozy of a question for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is a tricky one. And if you want to— yeah, if you want to punt, I totally get it because it's a big one.

Throw it at me.

So you've, you've done 10,000 salary negotiations, right?

Minimum, minimum, right? Minimum in a week, probably 30 offers.

Okay.

Yeah.

Somebody that's done that many offers, I know that you've learned what people really value beyond paychecks. So when I have recruiters that tell me we're not paying enough, we're not offering enough money, I can't make the hires because our comp is off. Help me refute that because I know you've made negotiations.

Oh yes.

In those 10,000, you made plenty of offers where somebody took a job for less than they asked, or less than they were even— I'll even go as far as saying that they took a job for less than they were currently making.

Oh, 100%. Yes, I had many thousands, right?

So what do we tell the recruiter that says, uh, we're not paying enough, we need to offer more money? Isn't that just lazy?

It is. To me, it is, because then you don't know the person fully. You didn't ask enough.

What do they want? Exactly. What do they want?

A few things that I look at. I want to make sure I'm well equipped, knowing what my company offers beyond money, right?

Like, beyond—

right.

I think she was going to say what the company offers beyond the money. Gosh, I hope she can make it back in. Oh, that's a good point. Let's give her a second here. Oh, we're getting close on the end of the time here. Hope you can make it back in. At least to say goodbye. I'm sorry about this, folks. We seem to have a connection issue. Well, I did not post her URL, so here we go. This is Angel's URL, LinkedIn URL. You probably know the first part of it, LinkedIn.com/in. So just type in Angel DBA and— oh, I heard something. False alarm. Okay. We'll see if she's able to come back. If you're hearing this, I'm so sorry and I'm not sure why you got dropped out. You're here? Oh, is it me? Oh no. Why she says, uh, let me I just asked her if there's anything she want me— she would want me to say so I can communicate it, because we're getting pretty close to the end of the show here, and, uh, not seeing her logging in. Well, folks, I'm so sorry if we had this. I see her, I hear her. I can hear you. Say something.

No, can you hear me, Shelly?

I can hear you. Yeah, yep, that's good. If we just have your audio, that's fine. So sorry about that.

Amazing.

We are running pretty, uh, close to the end of time here. Is there anything you want to do? Yeah, so leave us with? How about the salary question? You there?

Can you hear me?

Yeah.

Perfect.

Yeah.

So the biggest thing that I would say for an individual, especially talent consultants, when it comes to negotiating those, is finding out what really matters to them. When you're asking those questions, see if they're in school, see if they're going back to get a degree, about benefits. A lot of times when you have those natural conversations, they open up more. I have a lot of women that say, you know, or men like, hey, I'm starting a family in the next few years. So I start focusing on the benefits that we do have and say like, hey, you can get these extra amount of benefits if you become an employee. And then within a year, we make adjustments, giving them that more insight, authentic relationship kind of conversation, which helped me— helped let me win over a lot of people, even individuals who probably took a 15, 20— sometimes I have people take a $50,000 pay cut depending on the type of role because of the type of internal benefits that we have. So I tell people, get very involved with knowing what the benefits are, have those conversations. And then if you could share from a personal perspective, one of my clients, they also gave away free therapy sessions. They gave away physical therapy sessions where you spoke with somebody if you had any issues. So speaking on those things from more of a personal level too helped me win over a lot of conversations and had me pull over a lot of great individuals. So it's not just about weeding in their qualifications. And that's what I was speaking about earlier, just really getting to know the individual past their qualifications. I want to know what's not on your resume. I want to know those type of skills, because those skills are what capabilities are today. Yeah, but can you just help me understand who you are now? So, um, if when a talent consultant look from that perspective about weeding in versus weeding out, it really gives them that well-knowledgeable information. So when an individual says like, Hey, this is a pay cut. I can speak and say, hey, though it's a pay cut, you're going to get this, this, this, and this. And then let's weigh it out. Let's have a conversation. Let's set up another coffee chat with what that looks like so you can see. And then let's go from there. And it has won so many people over because of my honesty. And I live with integrity as well. So not trying to facade somebody way in or just sugarcoat or just— no, I don't do any of those. I'd be very honest and transparent with the individual. Letting them know what we can offer, what we can support, right? One thing that one of my previous employees also had was two different types of educational benefits. After a year, they paid full ride. And a lot of people like, that's extremely— but that's a lot of money. I can save the money right there. So, or they're raising a family and they need to go through IVF. One of my previous companies paid over $30,000 on top of additional support. Like, that's a lot of money that they're saving in another area. That can help them start the family or whatever that is that they're looking for that's going to bring that complete happiness to them. So I tell consultants all the time, we first weed in versus weeding out and ask those more natural conversations. Don't jump straight into the interview. Hey, tell me more about yourself. What's more important to you? One of my biggest questions is, what do you want a company to provide to you? That gives me a quick breakdown of what they want very quickly. As I'm analyzing them throughout the conversation.

That's great. You're providing them more than just money. I mean, it's money in other— there's other forms of money, you know what I mean? So, well, uh, this has been a really educational chat and, uh, very animated. Thank you so much for, for your, your passion and, uh your leadership in this area. I'm very glad that I was introduced to you. We're a little bit over time, but I did want to ask you a question that I asked everybody and the reason that you're on the show today. Who should be our next guest?

I'm so sorry, I can't hear you. I can—

I said, who should be our next guest? Did you, did you catch that? Let me put it in the chat.

Great question, really great question. I know a few VPs that can speak on a very higher scale. One, her name is Kelly Blackman. She is a VP of in HR, which is really great. She can speak on multiple magnitudes of like career development, mobility, what that looks like, how to have those conversations when you're trying to grow yourself. And I always tell people, even applicants, you have to be a headhunter when it comes to your own career. You have to be that initiator. She will be somebody that can really speak from multiple ways, starting from the bottom up and moving up. I will also say Courtney Branham. She's— she started from assistant recruiter. Now she's a manager. Really great with leading and developing individuals in the RPO space. It's really good. I know a few individuals that are really good in general that I can send over later.

Sure. Great.

Yeah, those two individuals really stand out to me when it comes to being your next. I partner with both of them, both two amazing leaders. And women within the, the HR space. And they can also speak from what it looks like to hitting challenging times in developing and knowing what that looks like when a company is making a quick switch or doing a merger, or what that may look like. They can speak to applicants from that perspective. What does that look like from, you know, an applicant moving in trying to change direction? You know, for me, switching from being a therapist to HR, that was a huge switch, right? And being able to find that type of competencies that can be able to be able to move over.

Awesome. I'll invite them and hopefully they'll accept. Well, thank you so much again for your partnership on this, uh, everybody. We will see you next week. Ryan Leary hasn't been on the show in a while. I think it's been years. So he's going to be coming back next week. Hopefully you can tune in then. Until then, be kind