Jackie Moore live on Shally’s Alley

Hey, happy Friday, September 16th. You are on Shally's Alley. Actually, I'm doing a flyover on Shally's Alley right now in my F-1 or my F-35 or whatever this is. Um, I got this from the, uh, Maverick movie. Still haven't seen it, but I really like this whole background Top Gun thing. So apologies in advance for my Kermit the Frog impersonation. Or rather Kermit the Frog impersonating Darth Vader impersonation. Um, but you know, I'm not sick, I just, I was just at a conference and it was loud and I had to yell a lot and I pretty much used up whatever was left of my vocal cords. Once you get to be my age, you know, it's, it's pretty easy to use them up. So fun times. Today we have a very special guest, a new friend to me. Uh, we have never met before, but Jackie Moore was very highly recommended from someone that I trust. And man, I gotta yet. He has got a contagious energy. I mean, just so much positivity. And I just love looking at his smile and listening to him. So this guy is going to be a lot of fun. Let me tell you a little bit about him because I think you're going to be impressed. He works with NVIDIA as a sourcer, a senior sourcer, but he works on their machine learning, AI, autonomous driving, and robotics. So pretty advanced stuff. However, on his flip phone, so not a techie. He sources people at the highest level of technology all the way up to chief level. He understands deeply the technology, but he just doesn't use like social media and stuff very much. He also works on high volume sourcing as well. So pretty interesting stuff I want to talk about. You know, Jackie, when we were getting to know each other here, talking about something, you said something that was— that kind of hit me like, boom, you know, like, I know this, I've been doing it for 25 years, but the way you put it was just very succinct. And I want you to tell everybody what you said, because your point was, you know, it doesn't matter if you're talking to a CTO, or someone who sweeps the floor. You are an expert in what you do. You're a professional at this thing that we do. You're a professional at recruitment and you're an expert at that. So you're not intimidated by anybody, even if they're really technical, because they might own their domain. But you own this and that's how you come across so confidently. But tell me, did I get that right? And how did you get there? What drove you to like that sort of epiphany?

You, you definitely got it right. When I started working with, uh, senior-level people, a lot of recruiters or sourcers have a tendency to be subservient. I think they're mixing it. I think when you're like customer service oriented, yes, but I think when you're interacting with people at that level Um, they're always our customers, but we're the experts, as I alluded to earlier. And I, I felt it was incumbent upon us to— if we're the experts, then we have to offer our opinion. They don't have to take it, but you would be complicit if you know something that works very effectively and you didn't share it with your customer and give them the option of choosing if it's something that they want to do or not. But this is our field, this is our domain. Nobody knows it better than us. Uh, That's the outside of it, and that's the approach I take when interacting with leaders of departments and organizations. It's just something that we have to stay committed to, and when we do that, they have a lot of confidence in us. Like, hey, this person really knows what the heck they're talking about. Like, yeah, yeah, this is what we do. This is what we do. This is our world. It's not your world. This is our world. Now, Shelly, I didn't hear a darn word you said, and it's not because of my technical ineptitude. I can't hear a word you said.

Oh, gotcha. I was just saying my voice is just so bad, man. I was saying that I love that what you're, what you're saying here is when you're talking to a machine learning expert, you're not an expert in machine learning. You're an expert in recruiting. They're an expert in machine learning. So, um, you can, you know, you're just there to ask questions and to get to the bottom of whether or not this is a good opportunity for them. That's it. You don't have to understand what they do because that's not what you do.

Absolutely. It's really, it's really, really— I've talked with some very powerful people. I'm not going to name drop at some very, very high levels at the top companies in the world. I have. And I think some of my customers, like, why are they responding? Why did they respond back to you? And you're actually interacting. So when I get these people either on the phone or we're corresponding, I'm like, you technically, I know enough to know what we're looking for. Okay. If you wanna try to impress me by talking, you're gonna do just the opposite. Cause I could care less. It's not relevant. I know enough to know that this is what we're looking for. Now I have experts, the best in the world as well. They're gonna, don't worry, we're gonna drill you technically before what you and I need to know right now. Do you responsive to doing further? And when I, when I tell 'em that, Uh, everyone gets it right away, like, wow, I'm more to the— but like, I don't have time to waste, uh, and I'll waste your time or my time. So we really, really do— they're like, dude, hey, I was doing this, let's get it done, Jackie, I love it. So I try to put them right in front of the right person at the right time as soon as I possibly can, and, uh The people appreciate that.

I can see that. I can see that. And it's a really contagious, like I said, contagious attitude, right? I mean, it makes me feel confident. So tell me this, when you're, when you're doing high volume sourcing, help me understand what that means. Because there's a misconception sometimes people have that high volume means low level. Which I don't think it is.

You know what, people, uh, I learned— I'm not gonna sit here and lie to you. When I first started off, uh, even my colleagues, oh dude, you're spamming, you're spamming. Like, you know, I just told you I'm not taking— I'm like, what the hell is spamming? And I'm like, they're actually right. When I first started, uh, sourcing almost 10 years ago, because I was, I was reaching like 600, 800 people a day. I ain't gonna lie, I was bad. It was really bad. But then I learned to refine it. And then people, people have a tendency to, uh, try to shame you for having high volume. It's like, damn. But my, my focus is this. It's like, I want both. I want high volume and I want high quality. I want both. It's, it's almost like, I don't know if it's sales or statistics, but it's really basic common sense. The more high-quality people that I have have, the more likely it is to fund the volume alone. The less, then it diminishes my chances as well. So I don't throw stuff against the wall and stick— no, no, no, no. I submit 8 people or 10 people, I'm okay with 8 or 9 being interviewed. I'm very okay because then I know the numbers start going in my favor. So one VP, I, and I didn't know, uh, very high-level company. She was interviewing me. She said, well, Jackie, we need 10 qualified candidates submitted per week, and from there we gotta have 4 interviews, blah, blah. And I, I didn't— I laughed because I'm like, did you say 10 a week? And she said, yeah, I need 10 a week. I'm like, ma'am, with all due respect, if I do 10 a day, I'm having a bad damn day. She said, excuse me, let me make sure I understand. You want 10 people that are interested and qualified for the role?

She says, yes.

I said, yes, if I have less than 10 a day, I'm having a bad day. She's like, that's impossible. I was like, no, that's what I do. And that's what I do. And my— so I believe in high volume but high quality as well. You're not doing— don't do that. You want quality and quantity. You can have both. And that's my goal. And that's what— now let me, let me throw a caveat on it. Now, some positions are just hard as hell. Some positions, no. Some positions, 3 or 4 submittals a day. It depends on the difficulty, the level, because I've done everything from high end to low end. So it does depend on the role, don't get me wrong. But for the most part, in my mind, I don't care how hard a position is. I'm not— it's very rare if you see me submit 10 candidates a week. That's just not going to happen. It's just I'm not built that way. I believe no matter if it's compilers or any part of HART or even a VP or director role or a CTO, I'm gonna get my people. I'm gonna get more. And when I walk into a meeting, I remember one of my colleagues, and this is a very good recruiter, we're in a meeting with some VPs and I get the position early morning and I said, hey, not a problem. I'll have you 2 or 3 people that you can interview by the end of the day. And my friend at the time, he's a recruiter, he says, Jackie, I've heard that statement. I could hear anyone says. Then he came years later, he came to me at another company, says, you know what, I remember that meeting. You said this is what you're going to do. He says, dude, you actually did it. I said, no, no, I wasn't saying it to be arrogant. That's my—

not arrogant if you back it up. It's not arrogant if you back it up. I mean, Muhammad Ali was not arrogant, man. Muhammad Ali was the greatest, and he could say that because he was, you know.

And I did it.

He got to know that, and he I get it.

So that's how I do, whether it's high volume. I just happen to be— I know it's a numbers game, and if it's a position that I think any sourcer should be able to get both volume and quality, uh, quality, I think it's attainable. So that's, that's in my mindset. I always have as a sourcer. I don't care who you are. If I start a company today, I'm having candidates submitted today. I'm not gonna— I don't need 2 or 3 days. I don't need that. And I'm not a guru expert into elaborate searches or these, uh, that's not me. I don't do that. Mine is pretty darn simple. I'm straight up LinkedIn. And I think it's, I think it's, uh, uh, Boolean searches for dummies like myself. They, it makes it easy for me. If other people have other methods, I'm not knocking it. I have friends that give tutors all around the world giving searches and all of that. I eat their lunch. I eat their lunch. No one gets me. That's just what I do. Hey, if you can get me, bring it on because we can go there. But both quantity and quality, and I take a great deal of pride into doing that.

I get it now. So the high volume just means that you're giving the hiring team a lot of options. It's not a type of sourcing or a specific kind of role, although you said It works better for some roles than others, which I get. The same thing applies to every other technique in sourcing, right? But it's a matter of, um, getting enough people in the funnel so that they can make a decent decision and act quickly enough, right? So I get it, I totally get it. And honestly, I don't think that that's spam if you, if you target people correctly and you have a highly targeted list. It might be a big list, 50 people, 100 people. I don't know how many you're targeting. You said 1,600 before, it's probably less than that now. If you're targeting a good solid 200, 300 people and they're in the right field and you're saying, hey, you've got this skill that is a good match for this job, are you at all interested? And it's a, it's raise your hand if you are, let's talk. If you're not, let's move on. And then you're diving in after they say, yeah, okay, yeah, what you got? What's up? Right. And then you start talking to them. I get that. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And what I also did is, uh, as I've gotten better, I refined— I try to personalize. See the industry slowly going there. If I, if, if I'm spamming, it's hard to spam if you mention a person's name 2 or 3 times in a body because you have to you have to basically, you know, you gotta make it individualized. So that, that, that made me connect with people even more. If I mentioned Shelly 2 or 3 times in the body of my message, he's gonna say, well, wow, this can't be a spam because he mentioned my name several times. And if I bring it even relevant to what's going on today, I hope you're doing fine. We just got out of this terrible pandemic and I hope you and your family are doing fine. Nothing lies in it. It's not— I don't make And I don't want them ever there, but then Hey, Jackie, you still there?

Can you hear me?

Professional in whatever.

I—

am I talking too much?

Yeah, you got— we— you got cut off, uh, for a minute there and sort of snapped like a, like a talking, you know, robot kind of. It's like, just—

I'm sorry, man, I get so passionate.

What's wrong with your internet? No, I think it's a connection. I think it's the, the video.

Oh, no worries. But as I was saying, I just—

again, so no problem.

Cool. I just want to share back with our community. I, I feel, uh, compelled to do that. I'm not threatened by sharing what I know. It's industry knowledge. I hope people can get bits and pieces from it and apply what they do. Uh, but I enjoy what I do. A lot of fun. It's a lot of fun.

It sounds like you enjoy it just from your enthusiasm. Totally. Uh, you know, I've always maintained that it, it takes somewhere between, let's say, 250 to 300 leads in order to get to a hire. And hear me out. So it's kind of like a waterfall, right? So you start out with, let's just say 300. It's sometimes it's 350, but let's just say 300, and you send messages to them. And let's say you have 30% response rate to your 300 messages. In other words, essentially about a third of the people that you try to contact actually respond in some way. Let's call that 90 people, you know, maybe a little bit less than 100, right, of those people actually replied. Now, those replies could be Hey, thanks, but no thanks. I appreciate you considering me. I get a lot of those, you know, like, I appreciate it, but I'm happy where I'm at. Perfect. That's all I wanted to know. You happy where you're at? Congratulations. I love you. Let's move on. Right. So 90 of them reply back. Out of those 90, let's say maybe about half of them are going to say yes. The other half are just saying no thanks, maybe later, not for me, etc. Right. So now you're down to about 45 or so people who said yes, let's talk further. Then you start setting those up for calls, or you, you know, give them a call. And out of those 45 that you end up talking to, a few of them are going to be too high compensation, a few of them are going to be not enough experience, even though you did a good job matching their profile. The profile may be a year out of date, or they switch to another, you know, industry or whatever, right? So now you're down to about 20 of the 45 that you actually connected with— I call those connects— and those 20 are the ones you, you really phone screen and actually, you know, do a deep dive. Even if you, out of those 20, you end up submitting half of those, again, that's 10 people.

That's right.

So there you go. Your, your numbers support what I've been tracking for 25 years.

It's real. That's it. You're, you're right on target. I agree. That's the approach I take.

You'd stick to LinkedIn?

Yes. Uh, yes, I do. If I find a tool that I think, uh, comparable to that, then obviously I'll use it as well. I just haven't came across it. I'm sure they are, but I, I don't know if I'm lazy or I just don't care. This gives me enough what I need. If someone else wants to introduce something, or if I find something else up in the peripheral that I think it all equals that, then I'll do it. But it's, it's a no-brainer for me. For me, it's just very easy.

Okay. There's a question from the audience. What are some, or if you can tell us maybe what is like the hardest type of role without spilling anything confidential here, but like, what's the toughest type of role that you work on?

You know what the thing I learned? Oh my god. Uh, maybe it's just me, I don't know. I feel that they don't give me the easy positions.

None of them are easy, right? Right, right, right.

It's like— and, and I'm not alluding and being evasive. They're all hard.

I—

it doesn't matter level. It really, really doesn't. It's the darn role itself, and it'll vary. It doesn't matter the ease. I can tell you this. For me, I'm gonna get kind of weird for everybody. The easiest thing for me, I've always dreamed like, wow, wouldn't you want to be in a position where you can just source anybody from around the world, go around the world, meet these people, as many as you want? Forrest Gump moment. I was given that moment, but it was at the highest level with the highest level of people within our org. Everybody's watching, though. Everybody knows who the hell I am based upon what I'm doing. So they said, go out there, Jackie, Give me principals, give me directors, give me leaders, give me— it doesn't matter. I was able to do that and that was hella easy. But when they start seeing one-offs, they're all hard. And when I embrace the fact that there's just not— I'm not gonna get any easy positions here. They're gonna give me the, the most difficult ones and I am—

I got you. Hey, that's, that's kind of the world in sourcing. It's the same thing in my team. We don't, we don't work on the reqs that people apply for. We work on the reqs that people don't apply for. So exactly. How about this? What, what's the job— and, and I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours— what's the job that has taken you the longest to fill? Like, time, like, just time-wise?

That's, that's, that's a, that's, you know, that's a tough question, Shelly. You don't have to tell me because I, I, I don't know. Uh, I, I don't, uh, nothing.

I—

there's nothing that actually They're nothing. I can't think of any positions because they're all— they're hard. I mean, I mean, they are— they're not easy. Like you said before, they would give it to other people or— no. So there's not any specific— I don't have a Moby Dick, if you will. No, I don't.

Gotcha. All right. So I'll tell you my story and then maybe it might jog your memory if you want. You know, there's one that pops up, but I'll try to make it short because of my voice here. I started with this company, and I was there for 5 years. At the first, I don't know, month, I inherited a rec that was troubled. It was, it was a troubled child, redheaded stepchild, and as head of sourcing. And so it was so challenging that they're like, you know, can you, can you please work on this one yourself? And I talked to the recruiter, and the recruiter's like, yeah, we've, we sent a bunch of candidates, and they're just not anyway. So I got involved with this, started sourcing, sending people, you know, submitting people, and they kept interviewing them. They would fly them in for interviews, and the hiring manager would be like, nope, not this one, not that one, not this one. I kid you not, they interviewed 167 people that flew in. I mean, the cost of this, just in airfare alone, was just like Wow. 167 people got interviewed. Well over 300 people got rejected before they even got interviewed. Right. And it took me 18 months. 18 months. Now, somebody from the— check the Facebook comments. Somebody just said, IR manager needed a beating. Yeah. So bad. So bad. I did. Yeah. So it took me 18 months, Jackie. And here's what happened after 18 months. The GM we're talking about, like, reports to the CEO, runs the entire division. The GM known to be a hard nose, like no BS, right? Just very much from the cuff, comes into Atlanta. And he's in the building and he knows I'm there, so he just walks right up to my desk and he's like, so Shally, what's up with this rec? It's been 18 months and you haven't filled it. You're supposed to be, you know, some hot shit, like the best of the best. Like, what's going on? And I'm like, oh dude, it's not me, uh, you know. I did everything. We have 600 people that we sourced. More than 300 of them were screened. 167 were interviewed. And he goes, wait, hold up. 167 people interviewed? I'm like, yeah, I thought you knew, because he's like the GM, so he's not doing any of the interviews. And he goes, no, I had no idea. Okay, thanks for telling me that. And I'm like, okay, all right, well, I guess I dodged that bullet. Because that was it. I mean, if he had a beef with me, he would have gone into something else. So he was like, okay, I got what I needed, I'm done. A month later, the division was sold. Just saying. Wow. Hey, I don't know what happened, but after that meeting, a month later, that division got sold. Wow. With that, with that manager included. It was like, I don't know, I'm guessing, hey, we can't fire this guy, so we're just gonna sell the whole division because it's not working.

Wow.

Or maybe not. Or maybe, maybe I had nothing to do with— I have no idea. But dude, 18 months. Wow. And they just wouldn't give up.

That's awesome. That's incredible. Uh, I like to stick with this, uh, stick with it. I thought it was awesome as well. That's, that's incredible, man. That's awesome.

So yeah, that's my record. Now that doesn't happen very often, I gotta tell you. This is, this is a story for a lifetime, you know.

I love it.

Like, there was a Book of Recruiting Anecdotes or something. I would probably submit that as one of the anecdotes for people. So you never had anything go, you know, months like that?

No, I've been challenged. I'm not going to sit here and lie to you. I was very intimidated. National company and the requirements were very, very challenging. And, you know, I'm with the VP and we're in a meeting where you're not going to be able to find this person. This is impossible. There's like only 5 or 6 people. I think it was for their France office, international, top it on that, and or their UK office. I got him 3 people and he hired one of them and it was very, very hard and I did it with them. I've always had people come back with me at Copa as well, Jack, hiring managers, and I'm not, I'll be careful what I'm about to say here because I read one of your things, but I'm going to generalize a little bit. Israelis are very direct. I don't know if you ever dealt with them. They will eat your lunch. You cannot, you cannot be there. They're very stern.

There's some cultures where they're just saying Australians are very direct.

Those are Israelis.

Yep.

One of them, one of them went in and my director said, hey, hey, don't talk to him that way. I'm like, dude, I like directness. I'm like, I'm okay with that. That lady came back, VP. She says, oh my God, you actually did what you said. I like mea culpas. I like people eating their words. Like, dude, This is what we do. We are professionals. This is what we do. And I don't lose. No, lose is not being able to fill their positions unless they just take me off of it. But no, I just try to fulfill every wreck that I get. I'm not always successful at it, but I try my best.

Yeah, well, not all wrecks are fillable. Sometimes they're fantasy. We know that. We know sometimes there's wrecks that are just not meant to be filled. So, hey, I like to just kind of wrap up things. I've kept you for just about half an hour here, and we're running close to time. But I like to wrap up things with asking a question: What is one thought that you want to leave people with that are, you know, watching this video live or recording, and that you want them to, you know, just something that you want them to like ponder about, about what we do?

You know what, I'll share something personal with everybody, and if you ever see me, I'm probably chanting this to myself. I believe in working hard, working smart, stay focused, stay disciplined, stay humble, and trusting God. That's it. Dope. That's what I live by. That's the creed I live by. And in, in, in this meeting and be collaborative and stop this crab in a bucket syndrome, support one another and, and, and stay true to our profession. If you see anybody that does harm to what we do as sources specifically, correct them if you have to. Like, no, no, this is not what we do. This is who we are as a community. Everybody on this call does have an obligation. It's you're, you're being team, but you're kind of being selfish as well because it's self-preservation. Because everyone— it can impact you. You may not think it can. So I learned that a few years ago. No, no, no, no. This is our profession. You got to respect it and just be a professional.

That's a really good point. You know what I usually do when I encounter somebody that's kind of messing things up for us is I send them to Steve Levy. He's like the industry bouncer. He's like, okay, buddy, tap, tap. Time for you to go. Dude's got like, I don't know, 10 black belts or something, you know. He's just like, excuse me, you're not wanted here anymore. See ya. But yeah, I love it. So, you know, keep out— keep an eye out. So to repeat what you said, work hard, work smart, focus, and give thanks. And then the other part of it is when you see somebody doing us wrong, speak up, because it hurts all of us. And yeah, you're right. It really does. Yes, it's— and we, and we're big now, man. When I started this 25 years ago, there were, I could say, maybe a dozen or so people that did something similar. There was no definition for it. There was no, you know, I called it cyber sleuthing. We're talking 1996 here, 1997. By the year 2000, there were like maybe 20 or 30 sourcing teams, if you could call them that, or 20 or 30 organizations that had some form of sourcing. Now there's 1.5 million people that have sourcing as their function, whether it's talent sourcing or, uh, source of recruiter, but different names for it, research or whatever. But that, that whole thing— so we went from, you know, a handful of people in, in, in a quarter century to 1.5 million. So this is no longer a wannabe profession. We are, we are legit. We've arrived. We are a profession in this world, you know. So I love that. Keep it safe for everybody. Well, Jackie, thanks a lot, man. I, I'm, I'm gonna just love remembering our passionate chat.

What did I tell you? Thank you, thank you very much, Shelly. Appreciate it.

Thanks for coming on, going strong.

Thank you very much.

Likewise, buddy. All right, well, thanks for having us. Okay, have a good weekend, everybody.