Patrick Moran, Sr Talent Sourcing Manager, BAE - Sourcing cleared candidates

Happy Friday! It is, uh, almost 10 past noon on Friday here in the East Coast, and so it is time for Shelly's Alley. And my special guest today, very special guest, is my friend Shannon Pritchett. You might have known as Shannon Ben Curran in a previous life. Shannon and I met before we met at a SourceCon.

No, really? We personally met at a SourceCon, but we had talked on the phone and yeah.

Yeah. And then after that you became SourceCon editor and from there lots of other jobs. Most recently Shannon took a job with a company that you guys might recognize called HireTool, which has been renamed now thanks to a cash injection of like, I don't know, several million dollars, probably $100 million or something like that. So, um, I guess technology and sourcing pays, right?

It does. Yes.

Yeah, I wouldn't have thought that when I started the sourcing industry 25 years ago, you know.

Oh, oh gosh, no. I mean, it was— oh, when we were— I, I mean, I felt like we were the generation that kind of made it cool, you know.

Right.

When I started It was hard when you started. You had to be intelligent and you had to have that personality that, like, to spend your time basically online, right? I believe what was a cyber sleuth?

That was me.

Yes. You coined, and that was the persona of your early 2000, late '90s sorcerer.

Yeah.

And I remember the first time we met. I remember the first time you called me.

I was driving in Nashville and I had People still use the phone back then. Like, they used this, but to make phone calls.

That was our first interaction. You called me, and I believe the first thing I said to you was, how'd you get my number? And you go, hi, my name is Shelly. I was like, oh my God, what an idiot.

3 guesses. Uh, A, I looked it up. B, I looked it up. And C, I looked it up.

Right, right. So, so, I mean, you, you probably— I don't know what you did, but anyways, and that's what, yeah, started our friendship. And that's what got me— you were the reason why I attended my first SourceCon. I spoke in your lab, which was insanely fun. I remember the very— oh, I think, Shelly, you were probably the first person I physically met at SourceCon. Oh yeah. I didn't know that. Yes. Yeah, you were there. Okay. Obviously you were there. Yeah, you were the first one I met. Maybe Amy and Kate. But yeah, you and then the order was like Kate Kellison, Mark Tortorici, and then probably Mike Notaro, Amy Beth, and Carmen, like, you know, and all my good friends today. So it's kind of funny.

Oh my God, Kate Ellison. I'm still in touch with her. I love her so much. She is the best.

And she just got promoted, so she's leaving.

Such a good person. I miss her.

Yes. Which lab? Oh my gosh. So describe the sourcing lab back in the day, shall we?

Well, it was basically what they later on called the hackathon or whatever. I mean, I I called you because I wanted you to do like a little 15-minute session. You'd never presented before. No. Are you sure? I'm like, yeah, you can do this. Like, no problem. You basically, you're like, well, I don't have any like PowerPoint slides. I'm like, no, just get up on there, plug your computer in and do what you normally would do. No PowerPoint. That's the whole point is no PowerPoint. So it's right. It's just a get up on stage or not even, we didn't even have a stage. It was like in the front with a projector, the classroom. Do something that you normally would do as a sourcer. That may be of interest to people. It doesn't even have to be new. I was— my focus was always do something that works. Like, I don't like all that— then you and I then later on did a dueling piano session that was really fun. And the reason that was such a good session was because everything we did there, we actually did.

Yes, yes. And we'd argue which, which technique was better, right?

Yeah. And I'm like, oh no, wait, this. And you're like, oh no, wait, that. And that, that's— that was the real thing about the sourcing labs, was it real. You know, it wasn't canned, it wasn't pre— it wasn't like saved searches that were bookmarked that you would like pull up and they— they're perfect, you know.

Yeah, I remember— I can't count how many presentations though where we did something like that, where, um, like the conference organizer would approach me and they'd be like, hey, Shelly wants to come on stage when you speak. And I'm like, yeah, uh-huh, yep, yeah. Like, wait, that's okay with you? Or vice versa, they'd be like, Shelly's presenting, he wants you to come on stage 30 minutes through. And I was like, cool. They're like, are you ready? I'm like, Oh, we do this. But my favorite, my ultimate favorite was, um, I don't know if you remember this, it was in SourceCon Orlando. I was sitting in the back of the room with Jerry Crispin and you were doing, um, you're showing your Facebook hacks and you were doing, as you do, you're doing it live in your own Facebook account. And back then when you use Facebook Messenger, it would pop up in the middle of the screen. Yep. I was like, I was like, let's try to throw Shelly off. So I sent you a message, you rolled your eyes, you deleted it. And everything. And then Jerry goes, I want to try this. You know, Jerry, bless his heart, you know, he was just like— this is probably the first time he ever used Messenger. So he sends you a message, and that one threw you off. Like, not really, but like, you know, you pause and like kind of smile because it was coming from Jerry. And I think he just said, hi, Shelly, or something like that. And then in the back of the room, everyone's quiet, and all of a sudden you hear Jerry's laugh.

Hey, hey, hey, hey!

And just the whole room started laughing.

It's like I think you're right. He probably downloaded Messenger just for that.

I think I did it for him.

Oh, yeah. He's probably never been on Messenger again since then.

Oh, man. But I just remember Jerry's laugh and your presentation, and I was like, it just made your session in that conference so much better. Yeah, that was awesome. But that was a pivotal part of SourceCon. And when people people look back and they're like, oh, SourceCon, that was all you, blah, blah, blah. And I don't think they understand like the progression it took to get to where it was, from like a, from like a hotel room to a— yeah, to the basement, as somebody is saying, to a bar, right? Yep, too many bars.

And, uh, that's right. Yeah. And so those hackathons actually really were— they started out as the, as the, as these lab sessions. And I remember, uh, Menaster, um, called me up after like, I don't know how many, it was like the 4th or the 5th one. We're still gathering speed, it was still pretty early on, but now there are people lined up outside the door trying to get in, right? And he calls me up and he's like, we can't do this anymore. And I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, but the, the sponsors, the people that pay the bills for the booths, they're complaining nobody's going to the booths, they're all going to the lab. And I'm like, okay, so that tells you something. That, that, that's not a bad thing. That means we need to move the lab to the center of the room so that it's amongst the vendors. And then that kind of evolved, and then it was the after hours, and then there was the hackathon. And, um, yeah, now it's all online, of course, so it's basically just one big lab.

Get back in person. Before we started, you know, we were chit-chatting and talking about the last time, like, you and I, like, actually sat down together and just caught up on life. And it's like, uh, I need to do that with you again. It's just— and you and so many people, it's just I mean, online events, I just, I, I just struggle with them, you know. It's, it's, my attention doesn't work that way.

Yeah, you know what it is? So this is a good— when the pandemic started, in this Facebook group, the, the, the Sourcing Method Facebook group, I started doing these Shelly's Allies, um, back then. And then they were just basically 5 or 6 people, and we started gathering together to do this just live chat because we were all missing going to the office. And a lot of sourcers, you know, don't really work from the office full-time anyway, right? We still miss— like, even if, even if it's once in a while, we just miss the human— we miss, like, getting out of the house, you know, and getting dressed and basic things like that. So we started doing it that way, and I was invited to do a couple presentations on what's it like to work from home. Like, gee, I've been doing that since, like, 1998 or something, so I could talk about that. But what people weren't talking about back then that I included in some of my slides was the whole concept of like— which now they coined Zoom fatigue, right? Which is— it's— it— I don't know if they just didn't think about it or didn't know about it at that time, but it's the concept of you're, you're sitting there staring at your computer screen, which we do as sourcers That's not a problem. But then there's this other thing. All of your meetings are online and nobody looks you in the eye.

Yeah.

And there were some reports from psychologists talking about why this is a problem, because we're used to having face-to-face meetings, but we're having— during those face-to-face meetings, we're used to being able to look somebody in the eye and make a connection. You cannot do that with a webcam no matter how much you try. What I've learned, which I get— I see you're doing too, is if you take like a step back, so my camera is more than arm's length away. Yeah. If your camera is more than arm's length away and you look at your computer screen, it looks like you're looking at the other person. So right now I can kind of look you in the eyes, but it's not the same.

Yeah.

Okay.

This was the start of the pandemic.

Right, exactly. That's right. Or this. Yeah.

It was like right there.

And I was like, yeah, yeah, that was it. And everybody's looking down or they're looking up or, you know, or you get a lot of these. Right. Yeah, yeah, I'm paying attention. I'm looking at the screen right now. No, no, you're not. How many monitors do you have? That was like— that was what caused people to just start wearing out on that. And then the other thing that nobody talks about is the fact that it's not working from home, Shannon. It's not. I've always worked from home for like as far back as I can remember. This isn't the same. This is working from chair.

Working from chair because you never leave.

I just expect you to be online all the time. They expect you to always be available. It doesn't matter what time. It's like, well, you're working from home, so, you know, you must be free. No, I still have, like, you know, restroom breaks, and I still have to make lunch. Okay.

Yeah, you know, well, you would meet— you're, you're missing a pivotal part of the people like us who have been working at home for 10+ years, we traveled a lot.

Yep.

So, so that was a big part of why we worked at home. It's like, you know, first off, uh, we don't need to be in the office. The second is like we were constantly on the road.

Yeah.

And so, you know, that was a, a shift that I had to adjust to as well. And because, you know, it's like when you say working from a chair, right, that, that's exactly it. It was— we're constantly— it didn't matter what chair it was. Was it a hotel chair? Was it, you know, are you in this office? Are you doing this training here, this training there? Yeah, that's what really, you know, kind of changed this whole thing for me. It's like, oh my God, I am not moving from this box at all.

Yeah, yeah. So I made my office in the garage. This is, this is actually, believe it or not, is a garage. Garage?

Wow.

Yeah, so on the other side of this wall is my car. Yeah, so basically just like a separate room inside of the garage, which is why I have a heater and an air conditioner because because there's no, you know, the house doesn't heat up here. Now if you're wondering what that other thing is, um, I am tethered to this ice machine.

Oh, the Iceman! Yep, because I've had that shoulder.

Yeah, over the holidays I, uh, completely 100% tear of the MCL and, um, meniscus. And so I've been, uh, you know, basically hooked up to this thing for a while. So I'm a little bit more used to sitting and, you know, working from chair all the time, but still, ah, yeah, I miss the travel. I do miss the travel. I would—

if I had—

if somebody said, what's your ideal amount of travel? I would say once every 2 weeks. Yep, that would be perfect for me.

Like, me too.

A week home, a week on the road, a week home. The problem was that it got to the point where it was every week I was out.

Every week. I think I did 2015, I had over 400,000 actual miles in the air, and it was something like over a million points. Um, it was enough to have Delta stat— like diamond status for 3 years. Yeah, you know, it was diamond. It was, it was purely— and I, I mean, it was— I— that's when— I mean, I went to Australia twice, I went to India twice, I went to Singapore a bunch, I was working in the Philippines. Like, that was, that was the burnout year for me, um, because I was constantly living out of a suitcase. And so Now it's like, you know, oh, you take a 2-day trip a month. It's like, hallelujah. Especially without a kid.

Yeah, right, right. Yeah. So how's that going?

Oh, it's good. It's good. Mom life is great. I love it. And so, you know, how are your kids, by the way? It's crazy.

They're, uh, they're basically teens now. Both of them are teens now.

They're a little buddy when I first met them.

You know, where, where things are in a lot of ways very complicated, in other ways a lot easier. So I don't have to worry about feeding them, they pretty much feed themselves. But now I have to worry about them eating everything in the house, and then there's like nothing for me. Yeah, and they forget to tell me that I have to go to the store. They forget that, you know, we tell Alexa to add things to the shopping list all the time, but they don't. They just eat everything, and then you just answered the question in the chat. What do you mean there's no food? Well, there's no more food. Well, did you tell Alexa to put it on the list? No.

See, someone goes, you've slimmed down quite a bit, Shelly. What's the secret? Teenagers, I guess.

Exactly. They ate everything.

I love it. Here's a good question. Somebody wants to know the weirdest conversation we've ever had with a hiring manager or candidate. Okay. Definitely the weirdest candidate. Well, I mean, there's always been the weirdos that, like, you know, you're like phone screening and okay, back in the day when you used to call people. Okay, so think about recruiting many decades ago, right? Okay. So when I first started, a lot of women still were not in the workforce. And so— and a lot of people still didn't carry cell phones. And so the info— the phone numbers you would find online were always landline numbers, right? So when you're a young girl and you're calling in to, uh, their landline and the wife answers the phone, you know, it was always like, I promise I'm a recruiter. Um, is your husband home?

I'm a job developer.

All the time. It was all the time. And then, you know, the husband would call like, you know, 5:30 for dinner or something like that. And it was like, you know, that's— that's— you used to have to, like, if you're a recruiter that left the office before 5, then you weren't really a recruiter or sourcer back then because that's when really the phone screens had to happen because people were actually at home because you weren't going to use your office line for that or cubicle or anything like that. And so, so, you know, that's, that's changed quite a bit. But I think the weirdest ones were I used to source H-1B candidates all the time for contract positions. And you're lucky, right? And I don't know if you remember early 2000s H-1B candidates. They were— they all sounded the exact same. So I used to— I used to love to mess with them. I used to, you know, anyone on an H-1B, because I, I could basically do the interview for them. Um, I, I would start asking them questions just to throw them off, like personal questions, and they would be— they'd be like, Uh, um, so no, I, I didn't know that one. I didn't.

The problem nowadays is that somebody else is doing the interview and then, and then they get the job.

Yeah, yeah.

But I would just say 2000— no, try, try 1999, 1998, 1999. It was a whole different kind of H-1B because that was Y2K, and we actually could hire at that time a lot of them because they were coming in for just these contracts and they were Russian because all these COBOL programmers, you know, Russia had already done all of their COBOL programming and they basically were obsolete except for Y2K stuff, right? There's a few COBOL programmers, you know, still out there active. Like Fiserv, where I was before, they actually had Micro Focus COBOL, was like the modern COBOL with 4 digits for the year. Um, by the way, people never learned their lesson. I have still seen software with limitations, like LinkedIn for example. Did you know that LinkedIn only has, uh, 9 digits for the user ID number? Still, they can't change it. It's architecturally hardwired. Oh wow, just like the 4 digits on COBOL, or the 2 digits on COBOL. Yeah, so what they did is they started— they went from base 10 to, um, base 13, and I ran some analysis on it, and it turns out that they're gonna run out of base 13 probably in the next year. which means they'll have to probably go to base 14 or base 15. So they can use letters. That's why the user IDs now have A or B. You'll see like A and numbers, B, that's base 13.

I was like, they can actually clean up their platform and eliminate the people who, I don't know, have passed on or don't even use the platform or have multiple accounts. Like, Twitter cleans up there. Like, I mean, my Twitter followers decrease by like 200 a month because Twitter cleans it up. I don't know why LinkedIn can't do it.

Facebook does the same.

Why can't LinkedIn clean up? Notice that would make our job so much easier.

You know, I tried once, I actually used LinkedIn Helper. I've never heard of that. LinkedIn Helper. And you can run this, you know, like basically you could run a robot that will unlink, like, unconnect or disconnect, because removing a connection is actually a pretty slow process.

Well, you— it is a hard process, and you hit 30,000 quick. Quick. I'm not even there, so I think I'm rocking like 27, so I have a good, you know, I constantly hit it because I'm always—

but yeah, if they were to delete accounts that are duplicates or whatever, but so much easier. Um, but just connecting that back to what I was saying about Cobalt and nobody learning their mistakes, what I think was really fun about that, um, was you could actually recruit them with things like, well, we'll put you up in an apartment because we can pay for that. It was so— the margins were so big. Yeah, that it was like we're paying them, you know, $100 an hour and we're billing the client $250 an hour.

Yeah.

So there was room for us to get them a car, a hotel room, or whatever. Like, so we're like, yeah, sure, just, you know, come on down. And, and those were basically work permits.

Yes. Oh, they were temporary. Yes. Yeah, so that was my favorite H-1B candidate, uh, and I became obsessed with this woman. Like, I picked her up from the airport, and that's things I didn't have to do for my job. I remember like taking her out in Nashville. Like, she was— her dad was the minister or president or something like that of the Maldives. And so, and she was a QA tester, um, I think I placed her at Nissan. And I was like, you're probably someone that doesn't have to work. And she's like, I need to do what I need to do to get off the island. And I was like, here I am, this young woman who has never ventured outside the US, and I'm recruiting somebody from the Maldives, right? And she was fascinating. Fascinating. I wonder what she's doing now. I obviously lost track, but that was my favorite one that I got to bring in all the way from the Maldives. Of all places, to Nashville, Tennessee.

And then stayed?

I don't know. I want to say when I switched roles, this is when I went from doing agency work over to corporate side on the T-Mobile. And pretty much when I switched, got out of IT recruiting and went into telecom, that's when I did lose contact of a lot of the people I was recruiting for. And a lot of that was because of burnout.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that happens. Yeah, you don't really forget though, the, the really good placements. You never really forget. My favorite one of all time, there was this Mexican restaurant right down the street from the, the place where I was working. This was like maybe at my second job as a, as a recruiter contingency, you know. And I used to go to this Mexican restaurant for lunch with, you know, people from work pretty frequently, and I kind of befriended, uh, the waiter And after a while, we just, you know, sometimes I would go by myself and we would just chit-chat and stuff. Got to know him. He was from Venezuela. In Venezuela, he had a master's degree in information technology and had like all these kinds of experience. And I'm like, dude, why— no offense to people that serve like tables at restaurants, I mean, I've done it, we've all done it— I'm like, why are you— if you have a master's degree in IT and you have experience leading IT teams, like, why are you waiting tables? Couldn't you be He's like, I can't get a job. Nobody wants to talk to me because he had a very heavy Hispanic accent.

And so back in the day, that was a big deal. It was hard to get an IT job.

Yeah, it was highly prejudiced. It was like, oh, you sound like a, you know, Mexican. And he'd be like, no, I'm from Venezuela. That was the end of that. So I said, you know what, let me help you out. And I produced— I produced his resume and introduced him to a couple of clients. He got hired on as a help desk manager. Which is kind of, you know, an entry-level IT job, really. I mean, he had the management experience, but it wasn't, you know, and from there his career took off. And we still stay in touch from time to time these days. It's been 25 years, but I can't remember the day he got the job. He invited me to his house and he's like, my family wants to throw you a dinner party because we're so grateful. Because he went from like, I don't know, $20 an hour, you know, waiting tables to like a significant salary job with benefits and everything. He was even a naturalized citizen. So this wasn't even a visa issue. It was just a prejudice issue.

It was. Yeah. That happens so often. I don't think I remember the biggest wake-up call that I received early in the career. It was a large tech company. I won't say their name, but it's 3 initials. They, they said, I don't want anyone who's been in the military. And I was like, why? And it was like, um, this— wow, might have been a QA tester as well. It wasn't the same position, but I think it was a tester role. And, um, they're like, that's not real work experience. And I, and I remember being like, wow, I have to find people who have never ever served in the military, you know. And it's, it's so— and veteran recruiting was a thing in the early 2000s. That, that was very much a thing. And so I, you know, and I had to do the opposite. And we used to get requests all the time. Yeah, I know. Ethnicity. No, I would— I had hiring managers tell me, I don't want to see women for this role. Like, yeah, you know, it's like that was— that's— that went on for a very long time. And you— I think you had to have agency experience to see it because they'll tell you anything in an agency. Exactly.

They think you're allowed to do it. I actually had that happen in Atlanta. You know Atlanta, right? You've been here a few times.

Yes, I miss it.

So there's a part of town close to the airport. It's like between the airport and the city in the south of Atlanta called College Park. And I— there was a hiring manager client when I was in the staffing firm who we were sending candidates to and they were rejecting. They were like, no, no, no, no, no. So I got on a call with them like, so we've sent you people that meet all your requirements, you know, like here's to the T. Why are you not accepting any of these resumes? You know, just want to understand where we're missing the mark. And the hiring manager said, well, so the thing is, I just— we just don't want any candidates from College Park. And I was like, huh? Like, what do you mean? Like, that's a zip code. What difference does it make where they live? And I was dense, right? Because I don't think that way. I grew up in a country where skin color and race is not even relevant.

Right. Which I don't think a lot of people realize that you're not from the US.

No, where I grew up, it's everything. Just, you know, the difference between classes was classes because of the money you had had nothing to do with your skin tone. So when he's telling me College Park, I'm thinking zip code. I had no idea that what they meant was Black. Yeah. And I was like, what do you mean College Park? So I put them, you know, I put them on a whole cover of my— and I'm like, hey Steve, hey Steve, what does it mean he doesn't want anybody from College Park? And he looks at me, goes, oh, oh, it seems to be like, oh, I know what that means, like he doesn't want any Black candidates. I'm like, what?

It existed.

It was like, yeah, I got back on the phone, I'm like, I'm sorry, we really can't help you with that. Yeah, I just was like, we're not gonna work on this, go somewhere else. Unbelievable. That's never happened to me again.

Yeah, uh, I, I never had skin tone, but I did have like, uh, prejudice against military, women, foreigners, uh, for sure.

Uh, there's no real experience, it's not really a job, right?

Yes. Yeah, yeah, it is. I mean, it's just so stupid. And you know, all those people, Harvey Manders, you know, they've been out of the game now for, for a while, right? Because they were probably in their 60s when I was working for them.

You don't think that happens anymore?

No, I know it happens. It's got to happen, right? But it's the ones that I used to work with. Military.

Oh, that's not real experience. That's crazy. So tell me a little bit about what you did. You ended up working at this company and they switched names. What are you doing there?

Yeah, I'm in marketing now. So, which— yes, I love it. Um, and so, you know, it's— and it's— I had a conversation with Maren Hogan yesterday, and we were talking the similarities between the two jobs, right?

And so definitely in marketing.

So yeah, you know, what we mean by this was there's certain ways in— marketing is obviously a very— it's a— it's an inbound-driven approach, but the way I approach it, I approach it like I'm leading a sourcing team, you know, like if you were to come in— yeah, you— well, that and, uh, with lead generation, but also in pipelining. And also like I have just dashboards and metrics like everywhere. I live, breathe, and die in them. And so I, you know, it's— I absolutely love this role. I have always loved positions that I wasn't qualified for. Like I shine when I have imposter syndrome. And I didn't have any marketing experience. I think SourceCon gave me some, but you know, I would never— like if I were to actually apply to a marketing job, No, hell no. I wouldn't even make it past the actual track.

Real work experience because you worked at a conference. The robot would eliminate me.

And so, yeah. And so Stephen, you know, our CEO gave me the shot and it was something I was really motivated to do. And I've absolutely loved this role. And I think a lot of part, you know, a lot of the reason why is because I'm still learning it. And, you know, it's just— and I have a very smart team, a very big, smart team. And it's nice that I have industry experience because a lot of— there's a lot of people I speak with that are marketing within our industry, right? I'm trying to network and meet some new people that are like, well, you're way ahead of the game because we don't know the industry, but you do. So you know what works, what doesn't.

Funny, almost every vendor I've ever talked with has no idea what this industry is about.

Because their founders didn't come from— yeah, when they started out and even once they got here to enter recruiting is zero.

Right. But the, but the, but the founders don't know anything. And so that's, that's sometimes just to me, mind-boggling that they're like, well, why was it? Why wouldn't this work? Well, you don't understand. This is never going to work because recruiters don't think that way.

No.

And recruiting is sales. And I know sales. No, you don't. Yeah.

Now that I'm on the Silicon Valley game of things, I can see why people assume this stuff.

Because they think that, right?

They think that, right? They see an opportunity. They see hundreds of million dollars, billions now get thrown at companies. And so they're like, they see it as a cash cow and it's very incestual. I mean, we all know this within Silicon Valley. And so they hire who they know and they get money from, you know, the typical people. And it's, you know, they all do their thing. And then when they realize that my product isn't relevant, my message isn't relevant, how do I fit in with this audience? You know, that's like the one thing they don't consider.

They don't. Yeah, I mean, don't consider that. And then they don't consider what people are actually going to do with this stuff. Because so I don't know if you recognize this, this hoodie that I'm wearing.

I do. Your LinkedIn hoodie.

Yeah. This is vintage. Okay. That's, that's how old I am that this is vintage. So I'm myself an antique. I realize now after a certain age, this is vintage. This was from 2007.

Love it.

I think it was the first, like one of the first times that they actually— there was this and there was a t-shirt. I got them at the same time. The t-shirt I can never wear anywhere. I still have it, but it's a LinkedIn t-shirt. On the front it says LinkedIn, and then underneath it says, because we just don't give a F-word. It was like the very first t-shirt. I know they never did that one again. So this is so vintage, and it was the time when I was working with Patrick Ewers and Constantine Guergui, convincing them, begging them, pleading to them to please get into this business, and they didn't have a clue. Like, no, no, no, we want to buy people, we want to find people that'll buy, we want to find people that'll pay for this. And I'm like, you don't understand, right? People won't pay for this. No, they won't. They're, you know, it took me forever to get them. It was like 2 years to convince them to get into this game because they just don't understand like the, the motivation and, and the way that we use it. And ever since that day, it's every vendor that has ever come into the space has had the same misguided initial, like, oh, this would be so easy. And, and of course there's the, oh, and you know, we're gonna eliminate sourcing and we're gonna— wow, didn't they— online, they were gonna do that.

That was like, that was like when I was at SourceCon, every vendor said we're gonna get rid of sourcing, right?

Yeah.

You know, and here I am telling you it is the most important part of, uh, TA today, right? It's like, and you and I have this conversation on, on LinkedIn you know, you're like, oh, this new message that you're saying about our firm recruiting, like, Shan, that's nothing new. And I'm like, yes, it's nothing new, but we've gotten away from it. You know, it's like we've, we've— recruiters today are so spoiled, you know, they really are. Like, you can use a system and a tool that automatically finds you information that took us like days on end to find. And so, so the heavy lifting has been done. And so, but yet as easy as automation has made things for us today, you know, I'm still surprised on how much people still won't adopt sourcing and outbound recruiting principles that, yeah, you and I know like the back of our hand. We grew up in this, right? You know, you know, you, you were the biggest microphone we had in our space and still is. And now it's like I am actually, you know, working for a company and that's my marketing message. It's like that stuff still works. Like we, we, not only does it still work, inboard or inbound always worked.

Outbound has always worked. It's been around forever. It's just becoming more and more necessary because the other stuff is becoming less and less possible.

Yes.

And what you just said, well said, Shelley. It's easy. What was that?

Well said. That was per— yeah, I couldn't agree with that more. Yeah.

And the part that is just what you said just now that really drives me crazy. Since the beginning of like when, when the first aggregators, people aggregators started, you know, talking about it before HireTool even existed, there were a bunch of others that, that, you know, um, there was a— I don't know if you remember them, the one with the— and they were all like, oh, but it's so easy to find information online. You can find everything online, so it's super easy. You don't need to be a sourcer anymore because you can just come to our website and find everything. And what they all miss even today is that is exactly the problem.

Yep.

Because you can find everything now, that's a problem. When we started and it was very difficult to find something, the challenge was to find the right person. If you found them, you were good to go. But now, because you can find anyone, there's a whole nother problem, which is you find everyone. Yeah, and that is not— it's, it's just as much a problem if you have— and here's the best way to describe it. Why should you use— if it's, if it's 1999, 1998, why should you use Monster? Well, because the alternative is called the White Pages. Yeah, right. So now the White Pages is LinkedIn. You can find everybody, but that doesn't mean that just because you have the giant White Pages of the United States you're actually going to be able to talk to the right person because you don't even know who the right person is, where they are. Just because you know that you can find anybody, good luck, right?

Yes.

It's, it's no longer fine.

And it doesn't make— that doesn't mean sourcing is easy.

No, finding people is easy.

Easy. Yep.

But finding the right people is not easy, and identifying people to actually respond is not easy, and all the rest of the things that are everything else about sourcing. So it's never really been about finding people because Google fixed that. Yeah, in 2000 or whatever, you know, when I, when I first discovered Google, I don't even remember when I started using Google, but I was like, oh my God, this is great. I do remember AltaVista and a bunch of other search engines that had all these features, and then Google came around and it was so much better, but it had none of those features. Yeah, at the time, like, you can't still do, can't do, uh, backlinks and stuff. but Google had a bigger index, and so I could find things. That problem was solved since then. Since 2000, nobody has ever solved the other problem. Yeah, which is you can find anybody now. Now you can find everybody. What are you going to call? Who are you going to reach out to? How are you going to reach out to them? How are they— how are they going to be interested in your job? There's so many—

yeah, are they going to show up to your interview? You know, like, like, what is— how are you standing out, uh, XYZ company, who, you know, you don't have a strong enough brand?

And guess what?

You're going against these companies with a major brand. I have a friend that owns this technology company in Nashville and he's like, I had a C-level cloud engineer that worked for him. He's like, he paid him $125,000. And he was like, it's just, he's like, you know, this guy would just could have kept going on the same salary for many years. You know, it's did the job, but he wasn't great. And he's like, I had no desire to give him a raise. There's just no desire to promote him. You know, he just wasn't that good. He said he recently quit, week notice, went to Oracle for a salary of $250,000. So now how is he going to backfill that role? Because he's competing against Oracle who has double the salary, right?

Maybe, maybe not. But you know, I know, I know that you've taken a job for less money.

Me? I have, yes.

And I have too. So it's not always the money. I mean, you sometimes take a position for less money because it's the right role. Because sometimes you have to take one step back to take three steps forward. It's not always about—

I don't think the younger generation understands that nowadays, Shelly. I really, really, really don't. Maybe there's some, and I, you know, we'll get fired up in the comments if, you know, you think what we're saying is different. But I just, I just look at, I look at the workforce nowadays, the millennial workforce, and I'm borderline, I guess you can say millennial, right? I'm approaching 40, so I don't know what I fall in, but You know, it was— I just see the work ethic has completely changed, and I'm lucky to have a very hardworking team, but the work ethic has changed for that workforce. And I feel like there's a greater sense of entitlement with a lot of people. And I'm basing this judgment on people I've been interviewing for various typical roles that feel like they deserve this. And it reminds me— remember, Shelly, when this is the same problem we had probably 15 years ago with master's degrees, right? Everyone who had a master's degree assumed that they had to start in management with no management experience and make at least $100K.

But you know what, though? This is not a new problem. Every older generation always thinks that the younger generation is entitled, and this is no different.

When you realize that, that you're now the old person poking down at the younger generation, and our, our—

so your generation and my generation are very different because mine is the hourglass— is the indentation in the hourglass, right? All the boomers came before us, then there's my generation, which is the narrowest of all, and then there's your generation. It widens from there. So the people that are in the workforce that are my generation is the smallest population possible. And as a result, a lot of us get thrown into management despite ourselves. We don't want to do Yeah. And so what happens is you have these younger generation people that, you know, want to get those management jobs, but they're, they're not necessarily ready for it. It's different to, you know, to lead and manage people. But you know what though, it's always going to be the same. They're going to have the same problem when they get to that, you know, unless the hourglass shape changes again, which I don't know what this pandemic is going to do. It's crazy to think about it because I don't really know what's happening today with birth rates, like right now. It was what, 18 months ago? When was it that we all got shut out and shut down and like, you know, imprisoned?

That was 2 years ago.

2 years ago. Was it?

Yeah, it was my son's birthday.

Yeah.

When he was born, March 13th, 2020.

Are we going to have like a boom or are we going to have— I don't know. Right. So 20 years from now, we'll be answering that question. And what's to me just mind-blowing is that nothing has changed. It's the same thing. It continues to be the same thing, the same problems, the same, you know, people are still struggling to attract talent. It's not— none of that has changed.

No, you're right. So I think just, it's just the— it's been magnified, right? Yeah. And I want to— John Harris is speaking my language here. It's hard to find good recruiters that know how to recruit and Here's why I think that is. My generation, you— your barrier of entry to this industry was a staffing firm. The Tech Systems of the world, the, the Robert Halfs, the Adeccos, right?

It was mission only.

Yeah, they would hire any pulse, anything, you know, that— and that's how I got in, right? And so I feel like anyone my age or within 5 years of me started at a staffing firm, right? And it was this cutthroat environment with these— it was kind of a sink or swim mentality. Training was, you know, and so, you know, we all kind of grew up, uh, basically learning how to swim on our own in this industry and really having to cut our teeth before anything. And, you know, not everyone, you know, was able to take, you know, Shelly's course and, you know, do, uh, Sourcing Institute and stuff like that. But, but if you didn't do that, then you— and you did a great job of bringing people into this industry with no experience and putting them through scholarships through your training program. But for those of us who didn't have that opportunity, you know, we cut our teeth again on staffing industries. Now the demand is so high that I feel like I've noticed a shift in the last 10 years where a lot of people don't start there. They're coming up from HR or they're coming up from other places, you know, straight up entry level.

Yeah, very little experience.

And I think, I think that has, you know, I'm not saying that you have to go, you have to be employed with the staffing firm to actually be a good recruiter. But I think there was certain—

that was then, this is now. I think it's a whole different skill set. But you know what, though, that the one thing that hasn't changed is it's still the same. It's still the same ethos, right? If you don't fit into that, if you're not someone who can handle rejection by, by make— by understanding it's not you. When a candidate says no, they're not saying, no, Shannon, I don't like you, you're a bad person. They're saying, no, I'm not interested in this opportunity. If you can't handle that, whether it's via email, via social media, whatever, if you can't handle rejection, you know, logically by thinking it through, and if you can't handle the pressure— because the one thing that's abundant in this industry is pressure. Which can turn into stress. If you have pressure that's not resolved, it becomes stressful and it eats away and it can damage you. But pressure is good if it, if it produces results. So if you can't handle the pressure, which a lot of people call, um, that I've heard it, sense of urgency or prioritization or whatever, but what it is is things change overnight and the requisition changes, the hiring manager changes, the demands changes. That, that's pressure. So if you can't handle rejection and you can't handle pressure, those are the two barriers for entry. If you can, everything else can be taught. So I think what's, what's going to happen for our generation, yours and mine, as we start moving into management roles is we're going to become teachers because we're having— we're going to have no choice but to hire someone that's very inexperienced and show them how to do this. Sure, there's going to be universities and programs. That post that brought us together today from Steve was, you know, where he said that there's no real education for it. That's really not true anymore. There is education, but that doesn't mean— just because there's a degree doesn't mean everybody can do it. Just because a university has a computer science degree doesn't make everybody a programmer.

Well said. Yeah.

So you still, as a manager, you used to have the luxury, and I say this Very clearly, you had the luxury of being able to depend on these staffing firms having taken a chance on green talent, whether you learned it by, by just sheer, um, luck, or whether you learned it because your agency was good at training, like Robert Half and Aerotek, where they had straight, you know, straight-up training programs. It doesn't matter. We have the luxury of selecting people that were already pre-selected and packed. Now we don't have that anymore.

Hard.

And it's not just in our industry. There's lots of other industries where they don't have the luxury of recruiting the people that are already trained. We're gonna have to learn how to do this. So managing now is a lot more about developing your talent than, than it is about hiring the right people. I think that's a big— to me, that's a big shift in the responsibilities of, of a leader. Now I'm two steps removed. I've got, you know, there's leaders who lead other leaders, and then there's managers that just manage the day-to-day. But I think both of those are going to need to get better at nurturing that talent. Otherwise, they're going to go somewhere else, and we can't choose from— yeah, there's no farm, right? Like with baseball, right? With baseball, you have the farm leagues. Well, there's no farm league in recruiting anymore. They used to be. Yeah.

Yes. Correct. Correct. That's what you all said. And that's, you know, when you start to get to the point where you can become the teacher and you can, you know, mold people to advance to certain levels within their career. And it doesn't— advancement doesn't mean a promotion always. You know, there are certain things like, for example, learning, developing a new skill, becoming better at something, you know, reaching new, new KPIs, you know, all that stuff.

Stuff.

That's, in my opinion, how you retain people. And I think, to me, that is more valuable than the actual money itself.

It's something for the right person. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, like you said, there's some people that are just entitled and they want to get the money, but if they're willing to learn, they can do it. And sometimes you have to take a step back, take a step forward. I had— I'm hiring, by the way. I'm hiring some searchers, so call me. Um, But I had a call with a candidate today that I normally would have rejected, but I didn't because I'm trying to keep an open mind. But basically, they called me up like, before I apply, I want to know what the hourly rate is. And I'm like, okay, normally I'd be like, look, apply for the job and then we can talk. Like, just sure, come on, do the same thing everybody else does. You know, you can tell that I'm answering the phone, you know that when you apply, I'm going to talk to you, I'm not going to ignore you. So please go ahead and follow them. But, but no, I didn't. I just said, all right, sure. And they're like, well, if it doesn't pay at least this much, then I'm not even gonna apply. And I said, okay, well, it pays this much, which is a little bit less than what you're saying, and that's the best I can do, so maybe you shouldn't apply. Yeah. And they're like, well, that, you know, I can work with that. And I'm like, all right, so if I already brought you down, you know, $5 an hour by not even— basically just nothing— I mean, so what's this tactic for? What's the topic of what's, you know, I'm not going to take any less than this except for when you say a little bit less than I'm going to take that.

Like, I just had the same experience. We had a graphic designer opening and there was a candidate that everyone loved. This guy was obsessed with us and I refused to speak with him because the glaring issue was his salary. And he came in with that attitude and, you know, every— the recruiter and then the other people involved at the interview, like, you know, just couldn't see past that. And I'm looking at it, it's like, I got— I have 20 people on my team. Everyone's salary fits into this bucket right here. And there are some strong players in that bucket that I'm never ever going to bring anyone in that's going to go outside of that. Because— and I don't care, to me it's like, it's, it's— if you want to come in at that higher level, good for you. We're not that company until I can get the people to actually You know, to me, as the team grows, you know, their salaries grow, the bucket, this, it moves. It's not like I stay in this box. It moves with the team. And, and this guy was just— couldn't get around the fact that I couldn't get over that. And it was, you know, we're talking about maybe $10,000 here. It wasn't the end of the world, but for me it was. And so I did— I, I actually refused to talk to him, and I was like, listen, I'm sorry, but you led with the salary. That's not realistic. Outside of my budget. I can't bring you in. Yeah, I can't bring you in $10,000 higher than my highest performers. And no, the answer is, let's— why don't you just increase everyone's salary by $10,000? Okay, that's $200,000 a year. And also, guess what? I've done that within the past year, and we're— that the, you know, it has shifted. And so it's, it's, to me, it's like, I know that's the thing right now is to pay people and blah blah blah, but at the same point, when you look at it from the manager standpoint and people come in with that hitting the salary hard, I get it. There's the whole let's not waste your time. But this guy actually wanted to waste our time because he was obsessed with us. He was obsessed with our recruiter. He was obsessed with everything. And I just like, I, I'm going to keep rejecting this candidate every time he applies because, you know, he can't get his head around salary because there's much more to that, you know, than being in our company. And I'm sure he deserves what he wants. It's just not going to be with us. And that's, that's something, you know, here I am talking about graphic designers and, you know, you know, it's irrelevant to our industry, but actually it is. And so that's, that's something that, that we've had an issue with as of last week.

So yeah, yeah, I normally would have never even had that conversation, but I'm entertaining those. And I'm also entertaining calls with people that have no experience and they start out with, well, I don't, I don't qualify, I don't have the minimum qualifications. And it's like, okay, well, you could. Yeah, that's true. If the job posting says must have at least 5 years of experience and you have less than 5 years of experience, then that means you don't qualify. But, you know, could we be wrong about that? Is it possible that we might be wrong about must have 5? Is— what is that really defining? Are we really drawing that line where if you, if you have 4 years and 11 months, somehow you're not qualified, right?

Yes, yes.

I'm exaggerating that a little bit, but so it's worth having the conversation anyway, because it's not, it's not the years of experience, it's the quality of experience.

And it's not just the quality of experience. Yes.

Also the ability to experience new things.

Yeah, absolutely. That's the thing to me. It's like, I don't care if somebody has 20 years of experience, or if somebody has 1 year of experience, it's the quality. It's the quality of my team. It's the quality of everyone in there. And I'm not going to have any weird outliers that mathematically in my mind don't make sense. And so that's exactly— I love that you said that, Shelly. That's exactly what it is. It's quality over—

can they, you know, like, like John Harris was saying on LinkedIn, can they learn? Because John was making this point, it's getting really hard to train people. Well, yeah, if you treat them like dogs and you expect to, you know, feed them with a clicker and like, You go sit. Okay, good boy. That, that doesn't work with adults, you know. Um, so training is really not the way. It's, it's learning. And learning isn't training. Training isn't learning, just like education isn't training, right? Education and training are very different. You know that. You've been an educator. And, you know, getting up on top of the stage and talking, that does— that's not training. That's not education. That's speaking.

It's entertainment.

Yeah, that's entertainment. There may be infotainment there right? But, you know, it's not training, and, and neither is, you know, force-feeding somebody to follow a particular process. Adults don't really learn that way. You know, I run that foundation where we, where we, as a nonprofit, we help people become recruiters and sourcers, and the most successful people aren't the ones that are predisposed to be recruiters because that's— there's no such, you know, like I said, if you have that perseverance that, that that it doesn't get to you, that the rejection doesn't get to you, and you can handle pressure. That's basically it. Other than that, good things are curiosity, ability to learn, and all that. But you can't just force someone to say, follow this process like a robot. They have to be able to learn. And, and the ability to learn, or the interest, or the aptitude, or the willingness to learn, is different than a training Yeah, all the training programs in the world, and I'm saying this from direct experience, we have a training— we, we— I'll give you the best example I can come up with. I had a student that came in, blind student from one of the blind organizations that we support, and they came in, they did really good through the entire program, completed everything in record time, did the capstone assignment, were given some, you know, live recs with a, with a, with a client as part of their training program. Everything went great. And now they've graduated and it was time for us to help them find a job. So that's the other part of, you know, if you complete this, we will introduce you to people. And no thanks. What? Yeah, no thanks. They went through all this because they are career learners. They just like to learn stuff. They had no intention of getting the job. Wow. Wow. The training Yeah, they're professional academics. And so you can train someone, that doesn't mean they're gonna do the job.

You're right.

Yeah.

Huh. Shelly, it's been real, but I actually have to bounce to another meeting. It's the top of the hour.

Yeah, you have like an actual job to do. I know that.

Yeah, it's Friday. I want to finish early.

Last minute.

Oh my God, no, the pleasure was mine. It's been a minute since we've caught up. Uh, we're long overdue for another late night of hookah and cocktails.

Come visit me though, because I'm not going very far with this tether.

Yeah, yes, and I hope your knee gets better. But thank you again for having me on. It was so good to catch up with you. Always been a fan, so I appreciate you. Bye-bye, guys.

Bye, everybody. Have a great weekend.