Cris "Aquaman" Carver | BECU | Live on Shally's Alley

Hey everybody, it's Shelly. You're live on Shelly's Alley. It is June 21st, 2024. Uh, it is hotter than Hades out here in Atlanta. I don't know about where you are. Uh, and no, I'm not complaining, I'm just stating a fact. Um, Really, I've been to Hades and back, and it is hotter here than it is there, sadly. So, uh, this is our second to last episode in June. We got one more episode coming this month. Next up will be my buddy William Uranga, former head of talent at TiVo and a few other companies that you would recognize. So come back for that. In the meantime, I'd love to introduce you to my very special guest today, Aquaman. I have an actual real-life superhero on Shelly's Alley, if you can believe that, uh, right here. So, um, for those of you that are watching, if you see a large fork on the wall there, that, that is not a toy. That is actually Chris's salad fork. So Chris Carver comes to us from BECU. You might recall a fellow BECU-er, if that's the right word, Marvin, who was here at the end of May. Marvin's still with BECU, right?

Yeah, yeah, uh, he is my, my, for the lack of a better word, boss.

Yeah, well, he was the one that put me on to you. He said, he said, um, you gotta get, uh, Carver on the show. So I'm like, all right.

Yeah, he's, he's such a phenomenal individual. I love working with Marvin, and, you know, his leadership is amazing. He's got such a good vision for what we're doing, and, uh, you know, it's a pleasure listening to his, his episode, uh, on Shallow's Alley a few weeks back.

Yeah, we go way back, man. He and I go way, way back to when I used to regularly travel to Seattle. I, uh, had, I had two, two jobs that made me a West Coaster. Um, normally I'm, you know, all about the East Side, but I had two jobs when I was at Google. I had to fly out to the, um, Palo Alto area, Google headquarters, every other week for— well, I was gonna say a week, technically it's more like a business week, so every other week Monday through Thursday night, I would fly out there, you know, and so it was literally 5,000 miles or whatever. And then when I went to Microsoft, um, I went out there for like a couple of weeks at a time or like a week a month. So I spent quite a bit of time in, in Seattle there, um, and got to know the area and some of the, some of the sweet folks there from the sourcing 7, I think it's called. But fun times. So, um, BECU— am I saying that right? Is it— yeah, it's a bank, right?

Yeah, so it's a financial, uh, or it's a community-based credit union, um, was founded 80 years ago by Boeing employees, and that's where the BE comes from, is Boeing Employee Credit Union. Uh, it's the fourth largest credit union in the nation, uh, which is really cool because it's you know, kind of narrowed in and whatnot into the Pacific Northwest. So being a community-based credit union in one very specific region of the United States and having that number 4 spot in terms of members of the credit union and assets managed is pretty cool.

So I'm really good with numbers, but I absolutely suck at math. Yeah, um, in finance, money especially. Terrible at money. So, uh, and I used to work at Fiserv, which is the company that runs all of the— well, they're, they're like Cisco to the internet. Fiserv is to money. They're the money highway in a lot of ways. And I know that they did quite a bit of work with entities that are called banks and entities that are called credit unions. So correct me if I'm wrong here, but basically the difference is BECU and credit unions are not-for-profit banks, which doesn't mean that they don't make money. It just means that the proceeds or their, their revenue, their income is distributed to their members or shareholders rather than to some, you know, some owner or whatever. So you have advantages with a credit union that are kind of, you know, pros and cons, right? Advantages are like it's a lot less expensive because a lot of the money gets reinvested and there's, you know, features you can get that you normally couldn't get at other banks because they cost money. And then disadvantages in that it's, you know, they're not the World Bank, right? They're not Bank of America.

Yeah.

They don't have that. So am I about right or is there a better way to explain that?

Yeah, no, I think that's a great way of putting it. You know, I think the other perk from more of an employer side of things too is that working for a credit union, you tend to be somewhere that is purpose-driven. You know, they're community-based. They have a very specific agenda in mind of a demographic or group of people that they're trying to help, as opposed to a bank that is profit-driven.

Right.

So, you know, they're going to fit different personalities, but you described it very well.

There's a cause as opposed to— well, there's always a cause. It's either money or— well, it's also money because it's a bank, but the cause is to to further the interests of the membership, right? Gotcha.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, so, uh, I, I, I have to ask, I just have to ask, um, when I was— you know, you and I never met, and I was introduced by, by a couple of people actually that said, y'all, you gotta, you gotta talk to this guy. Um, and I, and I looked you up and you've got this thing on LinkedIn that says that you are Aquaman. Now, now, I have to, I have to say, I hope you're not actually, you know, delusional about being Aquaman. But can you explain to me how that whole thing comes up?

Like, yeah, yeah. So, uh, a couple years back, I had the opportunity to work for Mike Cohen, who's also known as Batman, uh, and everybody that worked for him, uh, oh, Batman, Aquaman.

So you guys had a team? Were you the, uh, League. What is that called?

The League? Justice League.

Yeah, were you the Justice League?

We were the Justice League. So every— everyone was given a superhero alter ego. Um, I really enjoyed mine and saw it as an opportunity to like build something uniquely me. Uh, and so I chose to lean into it really heavily, built it into my own thing. Uh, but that's, that's its roots. That's where it came from. Uh, and then I like the idea of being a quote-unquote super sorcerer. Uh, you know, someone that is—

so it is a marketing positioning branding thing.

Absolutely. That's absolutely what it is. Uh, the, the best part about it all—

why Aquaman though? So what was like your— sorry, but I'm just curious about what was your driver. Did you grow up with Aquaman comics, or do you just like water?

Um, no, so I, I actually didn't pick the, the moniker for me. It was, it was given to me, um, you know, just to, to fit that Justice League theme, uh, that, that, uh you know, that Mike was running over at Wayne Technologies. And, um, you know, I liked it. Uh, Aquaman is a, a very principled individual, uh, values his family, uh, is quite intelligent and strategic in the way that he approaches things. And I was like, you know what, I think I can stick with this. This makes sense.

Yeah. Okay, so it fit your character. And, um, please let me know if you, if you can swim.

I can, yes. I'm better at not sinking than I am swimming. Uh, I definitely can swim.

It is very difficult for me to not think. Um, so before we move on to, uh, another, um, topic here, who are some of the, uh, other members of the original, you know, Batman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman?

Yeah, yep, we had Wonder Woman. That's, uh, Julia Adler. Um, you know, and, and, uh, we had Is taken already?

Ah, I wanted to be Wonder Woman. She was by far my favorite.

She's awesome. Yeah, she's awesome. And, you know, my good friend Julia is a phenomenal person that wore that mantle well. We had Nightwing, which is, you know, a version of Robin that was employee number 1, or I guess employee number 2 after the founding of Wayne Technologies. So it made sense, the sidekick. That came in and was tutored under Batman. We had Cyborg, Batgirl, Huntress.

Oh, Cyborg!

Yep.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, we had some good ones. It was a lot of fun.

Is Superman part of this league?

Yes, but there's a weird dichotomy between Batman and Superman, so—

Yeah, didn't Batman fire Superman or something?

Yeah, yeah, so that bridge was never crossed.

Okay, all right, all right, all right. Yeah, so Who's the— oh wait, Flash, right?

Yeah, I wish we had a Flash.

No one's asking that question. He and I, my son and I, have been watching Flash since he was little, and it's a very long series. So whenever we get a chance, we catch an episode together, and it just keeps going, going. Not in a bad way, but it, you know, it's, it's a kid's show, but it's really fun. And, uh, Flash definitely has the— embodies some, uh personality elements that are, you know, very appealing, like just honesty, integrity, you know, stuff like that. So cool, I get it now. I get it. And where did you get the trident?

Uh, so that, that was gifted to me, uh, as part of this, uh, branding that I have leaned into. Uh, and so I gladly put it up on my wall and it stays there. It's in the background of all my Zoom calls. And it's awesome. Yeah, webinars, you know, on the background of my Zoom call.

Yeah, sorry, webinars. And what were you saying?

Well, podcasts such as Shally's Alley. Here we go.

Right, there you go. You can't really see it. I'm gonna be redecorating. My son is going to be joining me in my office this summer. So you can't really see it, but over there you see those 3 dolls? Uh-huh. They're action figures.

Okay.

And they are recruiting action heroes. There's 4 in the series. I have been forever looking for the 4th one. Anybody that's out there, please, I beg you, if you know where the fourth one is, I will fly out there and I don't know, I'll do something that you, something really unexpected and good. But anyways, so you probably don't remember this or you might not even been around, Hot Jobs.

I'm familiar with the name, that was never part of my recruiting experience.

So like, you know, we're talking about OCC, Online Career Center became Monster, Career Builder, uh, NetTemps. Hot Jobs was another competitor of theirs, and they got acquired by Yahoo. And when Yahoo acquired them, in order just to, I don't know, just revitalize the brand and, and kind of assimilate it, uh, they, they continued this gimmick that Hot Jobs had. Um, the, the first one was a— see if I can find it— was a, uh, Hot Jobs Yeah, they're sort of, they're sort of kind of stuck to the wall a little bit, but they're all mint in their package.

Um, oh, that is awesome.

And it's basically a recruiter, right? It's called the Super Recruiter, fully flexible HR action figure, extra value pack, comes with a hiring booth. And a lens for finding the right one. It also has a briefcase that rather looks kind of like, um, a tackle box.

Yeah, kind of.

Yeah. And then there's a piggy bank. I don't know why there's a piggy bank. And a magnet. I get that talent magnet. Of course, a power suit. Um, she's even got a little, uh, what do you call that?

Batman wears, uh, like a mask or a cat.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, like one of those. And, um, there's, there's 4 in the series. I have 3 of them and I'm missing the 4th one. So that's kind of my prized possession that is on my wall that is somewhat related to, um, action heroes. Yeah, but, uh, I'm really interested in kind of how this whole thing played out with regard to kind of the way that you source. So you, you started sourcing and, um, kind of, I don't know, developed a style. You know, everybody, like, every artist has a brush stroke, right? Right. And you talk about, uh, clean search. You say you always want to have a clean search. Not something I hear a lot. I think I understand the concept, but can you explain, first of all, what is a clean search, and then why is it so important?

Yeah, so I'm gonna back this up a little bit and give you my background as to why this developed so it makes a little bit more sense, I hope.

Yeah.

Um, back in 2021, uh, I, I felt like I knew what sourcing was. I felt like I knew how to find people, and I learned I wasn't very good. I had attended the virtual, uh, RecruitCon where Brian Fink spoke about Boolean, and I, I understood the the and/or/not. I didn't know how to use it very effectively, but I understood the fundamentals at least a little bit. And I heard him talk about the way to build a search, and I felt like my mind was blown. At the time, I was working for a property management company called Peak Living. My tech suite was LinkedIn Recruiter and Indeed resume database. And, and so that, that was my exposure, and I was trying to find a lot of people that seemed to be really hard to find on LinkedIn. My LinkedIn recruiter didn't do me a lot of, a lot of good. Um, so I started building Boolean searches in the Indeed resume database, and I started getting people back, and I started tracking my metrics, figuring out what was working, what wasn't. Um, and it just started making more and more sense to me. It was like word math, um, you know, and converting words into variables and then drawing out an equation to get what I wanted. Um, yeah, and I learned that as I segmented—

so in other words, logic.

Logic. Oh yeah, yes, yeah, I took a logic course in Boolean logic.

Yeah, gotcha.

Yeah, I took several logic courses in, in, uh, my, my time at Southern Utah University, and, um, that would be the way I describe it. But not a lot of people have that same background, uh, but that's, you know, it's, it is what it is. But I learned that being intentional about each piece of your Boolean allowed for you to drop things out or add things in in a way that it was meaningful. It wasn't just a large word vomit of what was there. And so I started creating, you know, as tools changed and I picked up, you know, SeekOut and HireEasy and the roles I started working on were findable on LinkedIn.

Folks, this is not a paid advertisement.

No, it's not. These are just tools that I've used. I learned that I could create nested statements and again, break things down by purpose. I started using text editors that a lot of software developers will use so that I could piece it out.

What's your favorite text editor now?

My favorite is Brackets. Okay, there's, there's a lot of them. Uh, Brackets is my favorite. Uh, it's free. I'm all about free. I don't like to pay things. So I started using that, and the, the concept of clean Boolean then was that I could clearly define what each piece of my search was doing and why it was structured the way that it is. Um, so I started putting together fairly complex nested statements, um, you know, to, to allow for high levels of variation that were intentional and I could substitute bits and pieces. I could cut that out and put in a new title string, or I could cut something out in a, you know, a skill section search and put that in. But it was intentional building of Boolean, and that's why I used the text bracket.

And then you discovered me and my lectures and realized that all of that is obsolete.

It depends.

Sorry. No, it doesn't depend on anything, let me tell you. So let me play this back. Nested statements for— I don't know who's listening, so at the risk of, you know, shall explaining something, nested statements are when you have words inside of parentheses separated by an or. The nest is the parentheses, and typically you can have statements that are nested within statements that are nested. So for example, It could be apples or oranges and pie or cobbler. So those can be nested statements, right? So just explain that to people. And then the sequencing that you chunked up into blocks would be like keywords related to the skills, keywords related to the companies, keywords related to the job titles so that they're in some sort of order that you can then sort of, you know, pick and choose and peel apart, right?

Yep.

Okay, go on. Just wanted to—

yeah, yeah, no, no, that, that's a great explanation of that. And so that's kind of where this idea came from. And then I realized that there are so many people that don't have access to paid tools, um, you know, and, and I found— I found— yeah, most. And I found an absolute affinity for X-ray searching, um, and, and diving into Google or Bing and just finding—

okay, once again, X-ray searching is when you use site colon and then a website. That's it. There's no magic. It's just site:linkedin, site:facebook, right?

Yeah. And it was amazing finding software engineers and, and going to github.com and being able to look at the code that they're building and reach out to them on a personalized level and say, hey, I saw that you, you, you know, this repository in your GitHub profile looks really cool. I've, you know, I've got a software engineering friend that looked at it, uh, says that it, it works. There's, you know, something along those lines. You know, what was great, or then diving into the world of, uh, you know, individual portfolios, um, looking for people that, uh, you know, front-end engineers. I spend most my time in software engineering, but front-end engineers that have put together their own personal portfolios as a published website, um, you know, also they became some of the easiest people for me to find, uh, because they have websites. They have— yeah, they have websites and they, they put contact information in there. So I, I didn't have to pay for contact info. I didn't have to try and finagle my way to figure out what, you know, the best way to reach them. Um, it was all right there. Uh, so, you know, that, that's kind of where that, that affinity for X-Ray search became, because I, I could take that clean Boolean principle of a very intentional chunks of Boolean with very specific, uh, um, specific sections following a logic, and then yeah, change the title to get different results, change the keyword.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, uh, and so that— I would say that's where my style really kind of developed itself in its entirety, was that, um, you know, I became this, uh, X-ray searching loving sourcer that just wanted to share and give people, uh, an opportunity to learn some, some too.

So that's the clean search, is that following that logic. Okay, uh, so pop quiz: the order of operations for Boolean syntax. A lot of people get all bent out of shape about Boolean, it's so complicated. Folks, there are 3 Boolean and really only 2 Boolean that you need to know about. They are AND, OR, NOT. You are now a Boolean black belt. Very simple. However, most of the time in most databases, modern databases, you don't need to use AND because it's implied. If you put word1 word2, that means this word and that word. The only ones you really need are the OR, which is frequently what you put in nested statements, and the minus or the NOT to remove results. In the order of operations, what keywords get solved first?

If you're using parentheses and quotations, that's where your order of operations starts to get complex. Everything within a set of parentheses is solved for first.

In which order?

Left to right.

That's right.

Right. And so the, the way that I try and teach this and communicate this is that if, if you learned algebra and you learned the acronym PEMDAS, or please excuse my dear Aunt Sally, right? Think parentheses first, translate your exponents to your quotations because that's going to create a single search term, and then left to right for, for everything. It's going to solve for the innermost parentheses, create a true value out of that. Next set of parentheses, create a true value out of that, and then it's going to read it from left to right and you're going to have the search that you built. That's why I like nested statements is because I can create multiple true scenarios that allow for that intentional variation.

Alternatives or synonymous. One exception to that, and that is if you happen to reach the limit. Most of the time you won't. And if you're going to use this kind of search logic, it's a good idea to shoot for about 8 to 12 search terms or, or I don't know, statements, right? Much more than that and you're running the risk of overcomplicating it. Simple is always going to be complex. But if you do have for the— because you, because you have to have longer ones, you can run into a limit where the search engine will ignore certain things on the right. So in those cases, when you're, when you're not sure if you're going to reach the limit, reverse the logic. If you have 8 to 12, then most important term goes to the left, the must-have, the requirements go to the left, then your nested statements, then your nots, left to right. But if you think it's going to be long, take the ones from the end and put them at the left. Because what will happen is then if it gets truncated, the search engine will tell you where it got cut off. And you'll know which ones got left out, and if those are the most important ones, you need to remove things on the left to make room for the ones on the right. It's an exception, but it's the only time that that follows. So if that's the order of operations, do you recommend starting with a broader search or a narrower search? This is kind of a debate, right? Do you go wide or you go narrow from the first search?

I think it depends on where I'm at in the search, but if we're talking the first search, I now had my— Yeah, I've had my meeting with my hiring manager. I know what they're looking for. Um, I say start as narrow as I can, is my preference, um, and then build out from there. Uh, my, my reasoning for that is, is they've got their laundry list or ideal candidate of what that looks like, and the more specific I can get there, the, the better. Um, however, that my caveat to that is that if they have such a laundry list of of candidates or of skills that they're looking for in this candidate, then I start broad and work in, you know, because I want to see what truly is the must-have or the nice-to-have there. But my general strategy is start narrow and then expand. But either way, as long as you're iterating on the search, I don't think there's necessarily a wrong way to do it. You know, with that caveat of are you iterating on your searches? Because if you're not, then you're doing it wrong. To begin with, and the searches are never one and done.

Right. Oh, wow, that's great. You know, I was just about to ask you that next question. Is it possible? Because I get asked this a lot. 28 years of doing this, I've advised, I don't know, probably hundreds of thousands of recruiters and sourcers and, you know, trained them all over the world. At least 300 organizations that have brought me on board to, you know, teach them how to do it. I always— I mean, I cannot think of a single example of a time that I was in front of a group of recruiters where this question didn't get asked. And the question is, what is the best search?

There's not one.

And it's like, you know, uh, there's no— you can never have a search that you apply one time and it's like, boom. Even I still don't do that. It's— and I don't really even go for it, but I will tell you that I have fundamental building blocks that I start with. Like, for example, you're talking about the X-ray, which is site: so that's a technique or a field search command. Yeah, that is, uh, frequently used. And then you add stuff to it. So I have some go-to things, but there's several of them, not one. And there's never going to be— even if you've been doing the same search, um, over and over and over. Case in point, I was looking for I was working at this company where all they hired were Golang developers.

Okay.

For 2 years, right, I led an entire team of sourcers and I supported an entire team of recruiters, and this was like their number one repetitively requested, you know, skill on a requisition. And I, to the very last day, continued to discover new ways of saying Gold Line Developer in, in searches. Like, just, you know, you just— you can't just do it one time. So there's never a silver bullet. There's never, uh, would you call it a one-hit or a one-off?

Yeah, a one-off.

Yeah, that doesn't happen.

Yeah.

But, um, let me ask you this. This is a question I don't get asked very often, and I wish I did. When do you Aquaman know to stop?

Uh, yeah, that, that's a good question. Uh, so my, my current strategy, uh, that I operate under the guidance of, of Marvin and, and ways that I've been taught is that we build out these campaigns, uh, you know, of, of potential prospects that we want.

Oh, wait, wait, wait, no, sorry, back up, back up, back up. Before you go all the way, I don't want— we, we can talk about that, but I'm talking about when you're doing a search. So you started broad or you started narrow, depending on, you know, but you, so you started broad and then you narrowed it, or you started narrow and then you broadened it. When, when do you stop iterating? All right. When do you, so you get, all right, I'm gonna try this, change that. I'm gonna try this, change that. I'm gonna try this. When do you stop doing that and actually start digging into the results for that one search? Then we can talk about the other one.

Okay. Okay. Uh, so as, as I'm building searches and I'm, I'm iterating, I'm generally looking at about the top. 25 to 50, uh, results, uh, depending on, on the scope of the search, right? Um, so I, I look at about the top 25 to 50, uh, and I kind of weigh my, my results of, you know, uh, if at least 75% of those are hitting the mark, um, then I, I know I can stop iterating. Um, and that, and that, you know, and I iterate. And the reason I start narrow is, is I hope to stop start really high and then I brought in because my goal is to get roughly between 150 to 200 people, uh, that I can drop into a messaging campaign, which we'll talk about in a minute.

Yeah.

Um, right. And so if, if I've run my search, I've got my narrow results and I've got through them and it makes sense, and then I'm broadening my results, I— what I'm wanting to see is about 75 to 80% of the profiles I'm looking at appear to be qualified well-qualified individuals for what I'm looking at. If they're not hitting that in that first 25 to 50, um, spot, then, uh, you know, it's time to iterate. Something was wrong and I got to figure out what was the common denominator that was wasting, right? But that's, that's my general strategy of, of when to stop iterating, is that now I've, I've run several searches and I'm hitting 75+ percent of those, and then you start digging in, right? Right.

Okay.

Yeah, that's when I really start digging in to figure out, right, you know, who's the most qualified, who makes the most sense.

Uh, obviously you're an extremely intelligent guy, so let me break this down a little bit for folks that are new to this, because, you know, sometimes when we sit in the chair, we forget about other people who haven't sat in the chair, right? Um, my, my way is you hit it dead on, but I just kind of want to break it down a little bit.

Sure.

I look at the first 10 results and just the first 10 results.

Okay.

And I don't click on anything. Okay. I just look at the 10 results, whatever it is, whether it's LinkedIn, your ATS, whatever search it is. I look at the first 10 results and in my mind, I mentally count which ones I would click on if I were to do the search. Like if I were to execute this search, and begin my sourcing, I mentally go, okay, uh, keep, keep, don't keep, keep, keep. And what I'm looking for is just, is this something I would click on? I don't click on it, but would I click on it even if I'm not really sure? So I could be uncertain, um, or I could be like, yeah, that could, that may lead to something or not, but I, I include it. And what I'm looking for is if 5 out of the 10 are nos, then I like, I blitz it. I'm like, that's not good. I need to rejig, reset, right? My target is 7 or 8, which you said 75%. That's literally right between those two. So if I'm looking at the first 10 and I go yes to 7 of them, I'm good. If I go yes to 8 of them, I'm really confident. I don't ever try to get 10. It's likely impossible, but even if you do it, you're more than likely leaving too many things on the table. So 7 to 8 is, you know, 7 is good, 8 is great, 9 is excellent, but you're starting to push the limit on— you may be leaving some things behind. 6, tweak it a little bit. Even with 7, you can tweak a little bit. 5, it may not be worth tweaking. You might want to just kind of scrap it and think differently unless you keep getting 5s and then you have no choice. But really, that's what I'm looking at. So I don't even— I just kind of go out of the first 10, I just go, yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes, no, no, yes, next, you know, and tweak it like that. And then I know that I've got— when I get to that 8, I've got a search that's worth actually clicking on things.

Yeah.

And then I do my second pass. Now I click on them and see if they're actually things I want to keep.

Right, exactly.

Yeah, and then I do it. Yeah, that's— so now, uh, I want to go back to what you were saying before. So, um, the way I think you interpreted the question was, when do you know how to stop sourcing? Which actually is a really good question. So you just did all your sourcing and you made a, a list. How big is the list? Or how, how much longer do you source by hours, by day? Like, do you have a— okay, I'm going to source for 10 hours, or I'm going to source until I find X amount of leads? What's your stopping point?

Yeah, that's a good question. So I'd say that's a twofold question. Uh, for really niche and hard-to-fill roles, my goal is to get as close to 150 people as possible. Uh, but I've got SLAs I've got to meet as a sourcer at BECU. Um, so if, you know, if I've worked on that role for, you know, 3 or 4 solid days and, and I'm at 120 or, you know, 100 people, and it's, you know, I've run 7, 8, 9 searches that feel really good, well-built, I've sought feedback, at that point I'll stop and I'll say, okay, these are the 100 and change that I'm gonna message. On the flip side, for roles that are less niche, you know, some of my more standard software engineering roles, even architect roles, what I'm looking at is, you know, ending somewhere between about that 175 to 215, 225 range. You know, by the end of 3 days or sooner if I can get to that point. So if I get to that point, you know, what I'm going to do is I'm going to stop sourcing. Even if I've got a backlog of people that are still from my searches, I'm going to stop looking at the profiles to determine who I need to message. I'm going to start there and I'm going to run my campaign. I'll start talking to the people, engaging with them, you know, those that are qualified and interested that I've now had a phone screen, I'll push through the system. And I put a little note on those that were sourced but their profiles weren't fully examined yet as a, I'm going to come back to these. This is my pipeline of people that I can continue to look at that were in the same wheelhouse as these first, first batch of people that I messaged. So that after I've had those engagements with my recruit, you know, my recruiter and my hiring manager, if we're off base, I can go right back to that pipeline and cruise through it. I've got the sourcing legwork done and I can figure out with that refinement if needed? What was missed on the first time? Was there something we need to give a higher priority to that we didn't in the first time? Things along those lines. So yeah, it's kind of a, you know, a two-fold question of is it a niche role or is it not a niche role? And at that point, what is your service level agreement with your hiring teams or your organization of how quickly are you working on a role to introducing qualified candidates? And do you genuinely feel good about the work that you've done? Because it would be really easy to get to 200 people and be like, yeah, you know what, people weed themselves out. They'll say that they're not interested or the role doesn't match. Well, I'm not okay with that. That's low-quality sourcing. I want to make sure that I'm putting my best forward.

Okay, so I'm hearing 2, uh, approaches. One approach is, and you know, this is going to change based on your industry, your SLA, your company. You probably want to start out by understanding how many people need to interview in order to get a hire, how many people need to be submitted in order to get an interview. But eventually you'll arrive at some figure. Let's say, so methodology number 1 for knowing when to stop sourcing would be to reach a certain numerical goal, be it, let's say, 50 leads or 200 leads, and then you can stop and go on to whatever, you know, outreach phase or submittal or whatever, right? So some number like 50 or 200.

Yeah, and we always get to those numbers by working backwards, right?

But there's a number goal, like I am going to, you know, me, Shelly, I am going to source for 50 names and that's my goal. And then when I get the 50, I stop. The other one is I'm hearing, um, you do perhaps smaller batches and get them in the process and then go back and do smaller batches and get them in the process and go back and do smaller batches and keep going that way. However I feel like that could easily lead into a not knowing when to stop situation or stopping too late in that the people in your first or second batch are starting to make it to the interview process and now the people in your last batch aren't getting interviews, right? Because we're full on and so you've wasted your time and possibly even the candidate's time. So I'm kind of hearing that you should at least have some kind of numerical objective, even if you plan on doing small batches. Is that— am I hearing correctly?

That, that's the general camp that I sit in. And I think what, what's important to know is that I don't run batch after batch. I'll run my batch, work on a different role, and then I kind of have that debrief with the hiring team before I return to it.

But you do have a numerical goal. And so that— okay, so you might have a timeline as well. But, um, but you still have to have that goal. Now, going into this a little bit deeper, out of that list of, let's say, 50, okay, what would you consider to be an acceptable target take rate? Meaning, out of the 50, how many of those at minimum should move forward into whatever forward means? Forward means the recruiter screens them, Forward means they get approved for outreach. Forward means they get sent an email to apply, whatever that next step is, but they move away from being an anonymous uncontacted lead to something else. How many of those 50 is considered minimum passable? Like you're doing your job.

So that's a really good question. When I think of those numbers, I'm thinking those are— that those 50 are those that I've already qualified and I'm reaching out to. So at that point, I would say the moving forward would be I've now reached out to them. What does that step look like? Um, you know, I, I— and in an ideal world, as I'm sourcing, I would like to see, you know, 70, uh, percent of what— of the people profiles I'm looking at are qualified, seemingly qualified, I should say, um, seemingly qualified for the role that I'm working on. So if I need 50 people at that point, you know, I'm going to have to reach out or I'm going to have to look at 80 profiles to get, or, you know, 70 profiles to get to my 50. On the flip side. That's what I was getting at.

That's exactly what I was getting at.

On the flip side, for those that I'm reaching out to, you know, once I've now moved them forward, I'm trying to engage them to become a candidate as opposed to a prospect. My goal is to hit about 35% response rate. Oh, okay. You know, there's some debate even internally. Marvin and I have this conversation all the time and it's a very entertaining one. Of, you know, should we prioritize open rates or should we prioritize response rates? And I'm in the camp of response rates. But both you can track backwards into, well, this is what my percentages need to be to be able to get the amount of qualified candidates that I'm looking for. But I look for a 35% response rate. I, you know, I don't care if it's a yes or a no. But I, you know, that's how I know I, reaching out in messaging that is effective. I'm appealing to the, the right kind of an audience. Yeah, that, that being said, when they are a no, I still— I don't want them to be like, hey, I'm not qualified for this job, why are you reaching out to me? This is a— right, no, I'm not interested, timing doesn't line up right now, maybe later.

Yeah, don't like your company, I'll never work for you.

Ideally not that, but yes.

Well, I mean, if they don't like your company, yeah, yeah, yeah. I used to recruit that Earlier in my career, I used to recruit when I was at Microsoft for Linux engineers, and most folks may not even realize this. There was a very hotly debated anti-Microsoft movement when open source was nascent and starting to pick up speed, and it was all like, Open source, yay! Microsoft is closed source. They're, you know, they want to keep it to themselves. It was like a huge debate. And so Linux was pro-open source, and contacting people that were working on that, um, and asking them to come to work for Microsoft was literally like trying to recruit Jedi to become Sith, or, you know. Yeah, so I would get a lot of negative requests. Now, uh, you know, The reason we had to do that is because Microsoft was launching the next generation of operating system, which was going to be open source. So whatever, you know, whether Linux won or what, I don't care. The point is we needed Linux engineers and Linux engineers like, oh no, I would never work for Microsoft. So that was tough. But I want to come back to what you were saying about the take rate more so than the open rate.

Sure.

However, and Marvin is a genius at this, so Marvin's gospel is definitely to be considered.

Absolutely.

But yes, and I would say yes, and I would say that the difference between open rates and reply rates is like in investing, the difference between trade volume in your portfolio and net proceeds at the end of your investment cycle. So in other words, if, if during the course of your 1-year investment your portfolio only traded a few times but you got, you know, 10% profit, or your portfolio, you know, traded millions of times and you still got 10% profit, all things equal, those are the same, right? It's not like one is better than the other, but if you have, um, a higher response rate and a higher— so both— then that means you're getting more eyeballs and getting— so there's, there's an argument for both of them, but ultimately what we want is the 10% profit. So, right, going back to your, your take on the take rate. So if you, if you know that you need— let's make the math simple— if you know that in order to make a hire you need 100 people, uh, now I've been tracking this for 28 years and I've always been my worst critic. So my— the reason why a lot of the things happen that have happened in my career is because I'm continuously testing myself. I just recently had a conversation with Jerry Crispin about this And he told me, because I've known him for 27 or something years, and he told me candidly, one of the things that he enjoyed the most about me was the fact that I'm always A/B testing. And to me, um, that comes from a— not a, not a place of continuous improvement, but a place of doubt that I could be doing better. right? So I'm always, always testing. So from the very beginning, I've been tracking these numbers. And I can tell you that in my entire history, the average number of leads generated to hires is 142.

Okay.

This is the industrial number that works across all profiles. However, if you're in some fields, that number might be higher and in others might be lower, but it averages out to about 142. So let's use 100 as a round number. Okay, you know, you need 100 candidates. Then if you also know that you're going to get 35% response rate, that means that you can't just source 100 candidates because you'll only end up with 35, right? You're going to need to source 290 candidates, right? And here's what I was going with. This was, if you source 100 candidates and your recruiter only accepts a certain percentage, you need to work that into the balance as well. Aside from the— so if you— do you submit 100 for review and then contact them, or do you contact them and submit the resulting ones for review?

Uh, the latter. Um, so, so now that's where I sit, right?

So you source 290 to get 35 that got— or sorry, to get 100. I'm sorry, 290 to get 100 that went forward, and now only 75 of those pass review. So you still got the number wrong because you needed 100.

Yeah, yeah.

So how many do you actually need?

That number just keeps climbing.

Well, just this one time, let's do the math.

Yeah, right.

So we needed 200 and 90-ish to get to the 100 that we submitted, but only 75 got accepted. So we still need another 25, which means we still need another quarter of what we originally needed, which is another 50, right? So you need about 300-ish and 50 sort of, yeah, source leads to get enough replies to get enough accepted to do the job. And this is where a lot of people in our industry go wrong. Here's what they do. They go out and they go to LinkedIn and they type in 2 keywords, hit enter, and then they take the first candidate and send them an in-mail and wait.

Oh, that's terrible. Don't do that, please.

That's what they do.

Yeah.

Or they find 10 candidates and send them in the mail and wait. But there's no working the numbers backwards to know if I'm responsible for this hire. Now, if I'm only contributing and I'm not the only responsible party, those numbers are going to be reduced, right? But if it all depends on me, which in many cases when I get brought in, I am it, and I need to get 10 hires, then I know I need to get 3,600 candidates so that, um, whatever, 2,000 of them get submitted so that, you know, enough get interviewed. You see what I'm saying?

Yep. Yo, I absolutely see what you're saying. You have to work backwards and look at who's, who's investing into this role. You know, I'm fortunate on two levels. Yeah, uh-huh. I, I'm fortunate to share these, these roles, uh, with another recruiter, uh, that oftentimes is doing some of their own sourcing as well.

You're only responsible for half of the work?

Yeah, quote unquote half. Yep. Um, but yeah, you know, you're right.

If people are sending one message, you know, or 10 or whatever, but yeah, find the candidate, message them, find the candidate, message them. There's no system to it. And that's where we end up getting falling behind because, yeah, it's much harder to catch up rather than what you're suggesting is source your list, make sure the list is big enough to account for response rate and take rate.

Yep.

To get the end result that you need, but source your list, then start doing everything else because if not, you're going to end up, you know, kind of basically playing catch up the whole time, right?

Yeah, well, think of it like a two-stage booster rocket, you know, like they all have their specific functions to get you to the end goal. And so if I source the large number and then find those, you know, that's stage one. And then my outreach is stage two and stage three is now at that point I'm getting to my goal.

Yeah. To whatever that next stage is, which may be apply or interview or phone screen or maybe you're phone screening them. But the point is it's that next stage. Yeah, that makes, um, that makes a lot of sense. So, um, oh yeah, I was going to come back to one of those. Oh, it's— it just, it just left my head. Yeah, anyway, I just, I wanted to make sure the folks kind of take away from this, you know, iterate your search until you get 70% of the results are, you know, clickable. Then source enough leads so that 30% reply is enough to get to the 70% accept. That's enough to get to the interviews. Kind of do that math backwards. And that's when you know that you can, you know, that's when you know you can stop. And in my experience, if that's not enough, then I go back and I reset expectations. So in other words, I did the list, I did the reply, the and we're at the end of this process and we still didn't get a candidate or something happened, I'll go back and recalibrate my search. I'm not gonna go back and do the exact same search or continue where I left off. You suggested earlier that you keep a list of second-tier candidates, and I think that what you're saying is they weren't a fit for this job, but they might be a fit for another job.

So you keep them.

Yeah. Got it, okay.

Yeah, they met the general parameters of what I was looking for, right? 'Cause they returned in the search. So at some point I'm gonna be able to tap back into that same pool.

Right, okay. So don't— you're saying waste not, want not. Yeah, don't wait, don't waste even the candidates that are— that you're on the fence, still put them in, you know, have like an A and a B list, right? Because you need to go, yeah, that's smart, I like that, I'm going to add that to my workflow now, um, for sure.

Yeah, I do that with statuses, other people do it with tags, other people just do it with separate spreadsheets, but that, you know, that's, that's, that's the way that, that I roll with it.

Well, we're getting close to the end of the time here, uh, and I just had to do a dad joke.

Go for it.

Okay, knock knock.

Who's there? R. R who?

Are you gonna let me in or what?

Oh, that's a good one.

Oh man, this has been spectacular fun and I learned a lot. Thank you so much for taking your time to, you know, out of your day to be with our, uh, our listeners, our viewers, whatever they're listening or viewing. And, um, let me throw your thing back up here for a little bit here. Connect with Chris on LinkedIn. Although if you search for Chris Aquaman, you'll probably find it, but yeah, there it is, most likely. Yeah. So all of my, all of my guests on the show, as you, you've been watching the show, you know kind of what happens next, right?

Yes.

Um, the, the two questions. Are you ready?

Go for it.

So my first question is, who should be our next guest?

All right, uh, so I, I've thought a lot about this one, uh, and I, I see David Marr, uh, put something in the chat and he's gonna agree with me on this one. Uh, Martell Howard, uh, is, is someone that, that should be on, on Shelly's Alley. Uh, phenomenal individual. I've collaborated.

I know him. Yep.

Yep, several times. Uh, you know, and he is someone that, uh, people need to listen to. He's got great ideas, he's brilliant, um, and is, is always looking to learn. For sure.

Yeah, I know where we chat on LinkedIn. He's in Atlanta, I'm pretty sure. Yep. All right, so, uh, nailed that one. Um, passed the test. And the other one is, what would you like people to think about over the weekend as they contemplate today?

Yeah, as people think over the weekend, I think there's two things I would want people to think about. Um, first would be if you could have any tool, function, anything that could solve a problem in a TA process or a TA workflow tomorrow, What would that tool look like and what would that be? I think that's how we're going to continue to innovate talent acquisition in figuring out what, what is missing and what needs to be continually contributed to. I would say the other question or other piece of contemplation for the weekend is think, how can I be more intentional about the Boolean that I write for my searches? It's really easy to build ourselves into habits. You know, there are going to be pieces that have to be the same. If you're X-ray searching using the site: command, it's going to have to be there. But I think it becomes really easy for us to become creatures of habit and creatures of routine.

Stream of consciousness.

Yeah. You know, think about how can I as an individual be more intentional about the searches I build.

Okay, sweet. That is awesome. All right, man. So we are at the end of the show. As I mentioned before, next up, uh, our, our next guest will be William Uranga. And, uh, coming up after that, there's gonna be— we're gonna skip one because the first one of July is July 5th, which is right after the July 4th holiday, and I'll probably have acid reflux and indigestion from eating too many hot dogs, uh, and you might as well. So, uh, we're gonna skip that one. Yeah, I may do a replay on, on one of my favorite episodes, but we'll see you back here on July 12th with ABQ, Amybeth Quinn. So stay tuned and have a great weekend, and by all means, please be kind to yourselves. Bye-bye.

Bye.