Recruiting Is a Craft. Chrissy Wilson on Raising the Bar

Hey, hey everybody, you are live on Shelly's Alley. That's right, it's me again. Oh man, it's Friday, March 27th, and it feels like 2026 is almost over. Like, it just, you know, what happened? Um, first it was like January and I was all excited, and now it's March and I'm like, when's this gonna be over?

April, like, already, dude. Can you believe that, man?

I know, yeah. I think I blame, I think I blame the, the, the, the, the weather in Atlanta because, yeah, I don't know if you know anything about Atlanta, but man, last week there was a day where I woke up in the morning, which I do almost every day, right? And, um, I walked outside to go to my office and it was like 80 degrees and I'm like, oh, this is nice, right? It's been wintry, you know, right? Like, oh, this is nice, 80 degrees. So, you know, I go to my office, I get some work done, I leave my office to go back and it's 30. And I'm like, what happened? Where do those 50 degrees— did they get recruited somewhere?

No, are you kidding me? Is that for real? Is that real?

Yes, it was 80 in the morning and then at the end of the day it was 30. It was like a 50.

How is that— how is that possible?

Like, I don't know, ask Atlanta. It's, it's psychotic. It's like, I think Atlanta needs some bipolar medicine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Florida's not like that.

No, there's some variation, but man, extreme. I mean, we had like a summer in the, in the cold winter part of the year already, and then we also had snow in March for like 5 minutes, but still snow, you know. It didn't, it didn't land. It was, it's, it melted as soon as like it, you know, got down to the ground, but it was still snow. It was crazy.

So anyway, now you know I'm originally from Toronto, born and raised. Have you been to Toronto?

Yeah, you know, I went to RIT. Oh, right across the pond there.

Okay, okay.

You could practically swim. No, you couldn't, but you know, you couldn't.

You take a boat.

There used to be a ferry. I don't think that there's—

there, I think there still is, but—

oh, no way, really?

Yeah, my daughter is actually visiting me in Florida, and she's like, she lives in Toronto, and she's like, Mom, I, I might move here. I can't do the weather anymore. It's snow— they had a snowstorm just like last week, yo.

Like, okay, but so hold on a second though, think about this. Toronto weather is better than Rochester weather because all of the lake effect snow goes south.

Okay, yeah, you're right, you're right, it lands on us.

Yeah, but yeah, so yeah, man, so good to have you here. It's, uh, been a while. I've been trying to chase you down for quite a bit here.

Oh, but you've been busy, like every week you want— I, I felt like you abandoned me. I was like, I did.

Yeah, probably for a while.

You did. I was like, what We two Scorpios, what's going on here?

Yeah, that's right, we're both Scorpios. We're dancing on each other's tails here. So folks, let me introduce you to Chrissy. Chrissy is a veteran sourcer and recruiter, senior talent acquisition leader who's been in the business for quite some time and has done some really interesting things. Like for example, you might recognize a few brands like, uh, let's see, Microsoft, Accenture, Walgreens, Um, Capgemini, Deloitte, Uber, Disney, Disney, Meta. Meta, there you go.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, so Chrissy's, uh, you know, hardcore.

Napster.

That's right, back in 2003.

Yes. No, no, Napster with the, uh, you know, Napster.

Oh, I thought you said Baxter.

No, Napster, MP3 back then, 2003. I'm old as hell. I'm holding shit.

Yeah, I just—

so yeah, real talk.

But yeah, I didn't know. Pretty cool.

Yeah, yeah, we were burning our— burning CDs. Remember back then you had to—

it's called PhotoSuite.

We're burning CDs. I was recruiting people, MP3 developers.

Can you— people who actually created the MP3?

Yeah, you're right. Oh my, I'm old as shit.

Well, I got some stories for you about that. Um, so there was a Microsoft product called Zune, Z-U-N-E. That was like the— I think the, the first device for MP3s, I think might have been the RealPlayer. And Microsoft was like, what a great idea, we're gonna have a library. And this was before Apple Music, before, you know, Amazon Music, whatever, right? And so they, they, you know, so I was actually on, on that team and, um, helped them create this device. And I was a huge fan of the Zune because it was a little black, hard, like titanium or whatever casing thing with a screen.

Yeah.

And it fit all of your music. From, you know, wherever. Um, and then it got, you know, and then of course the iPod came out and it was like, bye, Zune, see you later, man. We're—

listen, we, we are vet— for real, we are. We've been in it for a minute. We've been in it just about for a couple minutes, about to tap out.

I can't believe you were there.

Yeah.

So anyway, yeah, so Christy's got a huge, huge, you know, background in technical recruiting. And the topic that Christy proposed was to talk about what, what Christy called— I don't call them this— she says accidental recruiters. And I thought that was the accidental— that was like a beautiful way to summarize something that I'd been feeling. And I went through and I'll quickly describe the pain. So there was a time where I was leading basically not just the, the TA strategy but also analytics and a few other things for a $2 billion technology startup. It was like 5 to 6-year-old startup, and I was trying to build a sourcing team from scratch, and I was looking to hire people that were, you know, experienced in e-commerce and things like that. Course, a lot of recruiters and sourcers were coming to me from places like Facebook and Netflix and stuff like that. And I kept talking to them, and here's where the pain I was feeling— because I kept talking to these, these recruiters— I'm using air quotes, um, to emphasize that they were really not recruiters. I would ask questions like, how many people did you submit a week? And they would say, oh, I don't know. And I'm— and I was like, well, sorry, but if you don't know how many people you submitted a week, Who would know? Like, where's that, you know? And so I had this feeling there were these people that were just kind of— they got thrown into the job. I'm not saying it's their fault, but they just got thrown into the job. They were given a, you know, a day's worth of training and said, here you go. And when Chrissy came back and said, I want to talk about accidental recruiters, I'm like, oh, that's the perfect title. So I want to know, where exactly is the breakdown happening or happened? Is it training, incentives, leadership, or low barrier to entry? But where is it that we are allowing these things to happen?

It's low barrier to entry, right? And so I'll give you an example. I don't want to call out the company, but I worked for a big tech company.

Enough said.

And I remember recruiters being on my team. So I was a principal lead, and I had a small team that I was coaching. And I remember thinking just like you, you shouldn't— if you're a recruiter, you should know metrics and KPIs and basic stuff.

What's going on? I'm not talking about like, what's the best metric to hire? I'm just saying you should know how many people you're talking to. Like, how would you not know that?

How do you not know that? So I, cause I am, I am a sourcer. So that means I investigate and I research. So I, you know, started to investigate and realize some of these people did not tell the truth on their resume. And they kind of just said, I'm a recruiter. And at the time, Shelly, to be fair, it was a time where companies just needed recruiters. So it was easy for people to say, I'm a recruiter.

Did they, though? Did they? I mean, did they really?

I don't know, man.

Because, I mean, I'm going to push back on you a little bit here. You say it's the low barrier for entry. I agree that that happens, and it's okay to have a a low barrier for entry in a role where you have a lot of turnover. And in our industry, in our job, you know, if you, if you look around, um, the average tenure in the, in the industry, as in people who stay in the— I'm not saying tenure in the job, but tenure in the industry is about 5 years. In other words, most people can't make it in recruiting past 5 years. Yeah, the ones who do are usually, you know, career lifers, but a lot of folks just can't make it past that. So in a, in a field like that, you do want some low barriers for entry, and there are other fields like that too. But I think it's the— I think there's another thing. It's not just a low barrier for entry. I also think, um, and this is where I'm going to offend some people and hopefully even piss some people off.

You're going to offend people, you know.

I'm gonna— yeah, I'm gonna offend people because they hired some people that should not have been recruiters. I mean, they hired some people that barely even had a high school diploma.

Yeah.

And I know that it's not a requirement to have a high school diploma to be a recruiter. In fact, come to think of it, I don't even think it's a requirement that you be literate to be a recruiter. Um, so like you said, the, the low barrier for entry, but then also these companies went out and they hired these people.

Yes.

And basically just said, have that— I mean, so it wasn't just the low barrier for entry, it was also the leadership, the leadership, making a decision that, you know what, yeah, I have no problem that you were a barista. You probably could be a recruiter, right?

Right. Absolutely. So this, the big tech company, my leader, she was bringing on people that she knew.

Just her friends.

They were, yeah, they were not recruiters. And so then it left a lot of, first of all, candidate experience was awful.

The candidate experience just went— we had to pick up, the real recruiters had to pick up the slack and like apologize.

And apologize. And I was like, where are you getting these people? And again, they were warehouse workers. It was just—

I—

and again, I'm not knocking— I mean, recruiting is great, but because I'd been in it for so long, I was kind of offended. Like, I dedicated—

well, you got to start somewhere. I get that.

I get that.

You know, I had a— I had a—

don't lie about it. Don't lie about it.

That's right. That's definitely— if somebody applying for the job is like, hey man, I was a barista, everything, you can do this job, great. But if they're like, oh yeah, I was a recruiter and they're lying, that's completely different. David said, you know, it's like customer service. And there are other jobs in the, in industries like, for example, in insurance, in financial services and hospitality, we have to train somewhere. And sure, there, there's an argument that there is no, there was no college degree for recruiting. I actually taught at Fox Temple School. Fox School of Business, which is in Temple University, and, and taught master's on, you know, MBA program, uh, on recruiting. But that was not a degree program.

It's not a degree program, but there's stuff out there. Like, I, I have my human resources management. I've taken AIRS. I have every certification in AIRS. Know that.

Yep, I know that.

You know what I mean?

These people that were being brought in, they didn't have any of that, and there was not a requirement for that, and there was also not a lot of training.

So And they got the same pay, and they got the same pay as us.

Yeah. So David says like customer service. Yeah, but you know what they do with customer service reps? The first week sometimes is literally just training.

Right.

When I was working at a, um, big company that was— I, I got brought in to help them build a sourcing team, uh, Randstad. It's okay for me to say that. So I was there and I helped them bring in several classes of inexperienced people from various jobs, but we had a 2-week training where the first week was just classroom training.

Yes.

And the second week was literally on-the-job shadowing where they were paired up with someone else and, you know, they weren't responsible for their own recs or anything like that. And then there was like all kinds of reinforcement and everything like that. But in our industry, that's very rare. So most of the time, these accidental recruiters love that are like, just, they just get hired and they get maybe given access to their CRM, and then that's it. So tell me about— you, you, you know, you called out ghosting, bad outreach, mismatched roles. Um, what's the single most damaging behavior that you see from these untrained, inexperienced accidental recruiters that is hurting candidates right now?

Outreach. So you, you have to realize you are representing the company And when you send, whether it's a LinkedIn message or an email, you're representing that company. And I've seen such horrible outreach in terms of maybe not getting the job description right or just not right facts or just very lazy outreach. And a lot of these people have options. Okay. These software engineers, they have options. Why would they go with a company that can't use— and I'm not knocking, and I don't want to seem judgmental, but it gets under my skin because I really do take the time to craft proper outreaches, proper emails. I just don't source on LinkedIn. I'm on GitHub, I'm on Stack Overflow, I'm on Twitter, I'm on— I'm doing what it takes. And so it gets under my skin when you think there's not a skill behind this. Because there's a skill behind this, right? So I feel candidates— and I've heard of candidates that, again, another big tech company, I came in, started sourcing, and I seen that they were part of a bunch of different profiles— or sorry, projects— and they never responded, but they responded to me. So the first thing I asked, why did you respond to me? And they said, it was your outreach. You seem to know what you were doing. And that is what candidates see, right? They could kind of decipher, is this a recruiter or is this— sometimes they're like, was that a bot that sent me a message?

Right?

That's not good.

So that's damaging candidates. So my question was, how is the single most damaging thing for candidates? That's, that's damaging. That's, that's damaging the employer's reputation to a huge degree, right? Because if a candidate gets 5 messages from 5 recruiters 5 different times and they all sound like, you know, this, this canned robot. Um, you know, maybe you're, you're, maybe you're the 6th one and they reply to you, but maybe they don't even read yours because they're sick of that. But you think that's also hurting candidates? Why?

Um, maybe the confidence and the trust of the job market. Okay, the confidence and the trust.

They're thinking, oh my God, another recruiter, right? Then they start generalizing.

Oh, they generalize every—

right.

And then they don't respond respond, and I, when I am fierce, I will just continue, and I make it human. I continue. I'll get their phone number. Don't ask me how, okay, because I'm not gonna say. And I'll text them, and they'll be like, I thought you were a bot. Because of their experience, it makes it harder for recruiters like us to actually get these people engaged.

So, um, you know, how many— when you plan a sequence out, I plan a sequence, I always plan the sequence for 7 messages.

Yes.

So I have 7 touch points, right? I'll typically— I'll try to use at least 3 channels. So email would be a channel, correct? Texting or calling or email or Facebook or whatever. So at least, you know, 3 channels. And when I talk to other people and when I train people on, on, on how to do this and I say, you know, start with a sequence of 7. Every single time, every single time, virtually, in person, whatever, when I, when I say that, it like the room goes silent and it's like crickets. And, and people like in the back of the room are going— and you'll see people like, because they don't do it. No, of course they don't do it, but they're objecting to the idea. They're objecting to the idea. And it's like, wait, hold on, hold on a minute, back up. So I can plan a sequence of 7 outreach attempts with, mind you, 3 different channels. So this isn't 7 emails in one day.

No, it's different channels, right? Right, right.

Mind you. But then also, here's what happens. Most of the time I can get my job done before I get to 7.

Exactly.

3, 4, 5 in. However, if I didn't plan for the 7, it's way harder to back— it's way harder to take a flat list and be like, well, who did I send the third message to? Right. No, you know, that's why you have that system, so you don't have to get to the 7, right? But you actually—

because of the way I look, because of the way I look, it's, it's on the first try for me.

How are they reading that in an email?

I'm just joking.

Agreed. But how do they get that in an email? You're sending videos now, right?

No, I'm sending a little picture. No, but seriously, I— my, my my outreach, I know that there is best practices on how, you know, big the email should be or the length. I have it so concise and location, comp. I have everything in there. And when you're responding, you know what you're responding to. So there's no follow-up questions. It's like, yeah, I want to talk to you. So literally it's 2 tries because I pack. But like, like what you do, I have a sequence of 7 as well. 6 to 7, but typically it's on the second or third. Typically the— it depends, it's 6, 7. I, I would say, I would say 6. I would say 6. Um, and because, you know, with Lickton you can do that recurring. But I— not just that, I'll— I hit them on text, I hit them on, uh, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you know what I mean? Like, I am relentless, but I get I'll say this, I have 11 offers out already with the contract that I'm doing already. And if I mean, my leader was like, this just speaks volumes. It's just because I'm relentless and I know what to do. And I don't— it's not one message. It's never one message. It's until you answer, because I know you're a good candidate.

Yeah. So sometimes the pushback that I get is exactly that is like, oh, isn't that too many messages?

No.

And it's like, well, first of all, it's not the same message 7 times. Okay, let's start with that. Also, it's incremental, as in one message builds on the other. Um, the first one was a bit of an introduction. The second one is like, hey, you know, I want to add a little bit more context. And the third one, I'll add a little bit more context. And speaking of context, it's also context appropriate. In other words, the text message is just a brief, hey, I sent you an email.

Correct.

You know, it's not like, right, it's not—

you're not bombarding them, right?

It's like 7 touch points is just touch points. It's not 7 love letters, you know?

And so, so I'll say this, Shelly. A lot of these candidates do not even get the emails because it's going to spam. Because even when I text them, they're like, I didn't get an email.

That happens a lot.

And so I'm like, check. So I am like, I am on it. When I say I'm on it, email is not like back in the day. Like, people are— it's going to spam.

They don't—

these people don't know who we are. No, you know what I mean? So I am—

I have a whole course on email deliverability that talks about that.

I'm going to take it too. And I'm just going to push it out there.

Yeah, because there's, there's a lot of technological, uh, issues that people aren't aware of. And, um, the CRMs that we use, they don't really— a CRM's job is to— what they're selling you is they're so— is they're selling the ability for you to develop and maintain relationships. They're really not— even though they help you send messages, they're not in the email deliverability message. No. What they usually, most of the CRMs will buy an ESP, which is an email service provider. So like Mailgun or SendGrid or whatever, and they're expecting that company to be, you know, but what happens is they don't care because you're not their customer. CRM's not really paying attention. And so sometimes you end up going into the spam filter or into the other inbox, and it's not your fault. It's not what you said or anything else. It's literally just from the sending.

It's from the sending. So that's why you need 7 channels. You absolutely need 7 channels. And I, I find that most people are not offended— this is not 10 years ago— by a text. They're not offended by that as long as it's short and you're not harassing them. They're like, oh, you got my number? Absolutely, I'm a sourcer, I know how to find you.

And I'll even have people to say like, oh, what if they reply back and, you know, and they're rude? I'm like, well, okay, so if I email somebody You know, if I email somebody 3 or 4 times and on the 4th message they reply back and they're like, hey man, stop spamming me. Hey man, yeah, no problem. You know, you said no, that's fine. Because what they're— what recruiters are afraid of, these rookies, these accidental recruiters are afraid of, right? Um, you know, the, the, the emotional impact of like that, getting that.

I don't care about that.

That's right, that's not your job.

I don't care about that.

I, I don't know. And the 5th message gets a response that says Hey, take me off your list. Do you know what that means? That means success. Great. I took you off my list. That's one less thing.

And I, right. You know, you're not, you're not, I've had responses that were offensive and it doesn't bother me. It's a part, you gotta have thick skin.

That just means that candidate goes on the, you know, you take them off the list, but that means that, you know, is this really somebody you wanted to talk to anyway? I mean, you are doing a professional outreach. All right. So let's talk a little bit about the, um, the. The psychedelic, the purple.

Let me ask you this before we move on. Let me ask you this.

I'll hold that thought.

I, I'm such a great sorcerer, but I'm single. How is that possible? Oh, I can tell you why. I can find anybody. Do you ever find a man?

Do you ever get out of your seat? Yeah, see, there's the problem. No, yeah, that's the problem. You're stuck in your chair, I can tell you that.

Yeah. I'm coming to Atlanta then.

Yes, come to Atlanta. Florida is terrible. You know, we love people from Toronto over here.

Okay.

All right, let's take a look at the psychedelic purple elephant in, in the room.

Okay.

Um, so, you know, the, the problem, uh, hurting candidates, hurting employers, hurting your brand, hurting other recruiters is the spammy, bad, poorly written messages. And it's not even necessarily they're poorly written, but that there, there's really no substance, there's no personality. How about this? How about because bad recruiting used to be, you know, local, right?

Yeah.

Now with, with AI, that recruiting is everywhere. Are we making the problem worse by giving accidental recruiters these AI tools that are basically just very rapidly sending even worse messages?

I think so. I think if there's not a core foundation already, AI is good, but having a core foundation of recruiting where we can go in and kind of re-message that or rebrand that, like, that doesn't sound good. If you don't have that, how are you able to say, this is not— I wouldn't respond to this? How are you able to say that if you don't have the core foundation of recruiting, hiring, sourcing, If you're just like, this is good. Candidates are not dumb. They know what is AI messaging. They know that they could figure it out. They could just plop it back into ChatGPT or whatever it is and figure that out.

Well, at least that means they read it.

They read it, but they're offended. And I remember one candidate saying to me he loved my messaging and he can tell that it was not AI. Now, it's not true. I use a little bit of AI, but I went in and I, and I revamped it and I reworded it specifically to him, and that's why he responded.

Dude, Grammarly is AI. Like, there's nothing wrong with using AI. There's nothing wrong with it. But here's my idea, help me clean this up and make it sound professional, make it funnier, make it simpler, shorter, whatever. That's fine. But the problem is that AI really is an assistive technology. And so if you're going to use it for outreach messaging, right, use it either end of the, of the, you know, either the beginning or at the end, but not the whole thing. So go to your, your AI and ask for a brainstorm on ideas on what to include. What should I include? What should I leave out? Tell me, you know, tell me about the candidate persona, whatever, and then brainstorm, and then let the AI make some suggestions, and then you write it in your voice.

Exactly.

Or, or exactly, you write something that's already in your voice And then reword it. You have the AI clean it up, etc. So clean it up, polish it.

Yeah, don't do both.

Don't do both. That's the thing.

And the thing is, first of all, we talked about this before, Shelly, because we did this before. AI is not new. AI has been around forever. Like, how do you think we search in Google and in Bing? And it's not new, right? It's evolved, right?

But it's so like a tool. Here's the thing. It's a tool. But just like a tool, a hammer is a tool, and if you don't know how to use a hammer right, you're going to be smashing your finger left and right. Absolutely.

And you don't want to smash these fingers.

And now, you know, you don't. You definitely not. That— not nails like that. Now you pay a lot of money for those nails. Now, when it— you know, so you've got this hammer and you've got these, uh, accidental— I'm gonna— I'm stealing that term, by the way. You've got these accidental recruiters that are literally hammering their fingers to a bloody pulp, um, and that's hurting everybody. So AI is just kind of an amplifier. It's like you just plug in the, the, the bad hammering into an amp, right? Made it louder and more dangerous, right? Right. And then we got it. Jermaine is saying they're making recruiters lazy.

Yes.

Um, and yes, so you're saying— so wait a minute, hold on, back this up. Is the accidental recruiter coming into this already lazy, or are we making them lazy by, you know, giving them these tools?

I feel they're coming in already lazy, and I shouldn't say lazy, they're coming in with low expectations. They think, okay, recruiting and sourcing, it's okay. Like, I could do it. It's not, it's not a big deal. So that's the mindset. It's the mindset coming in. This is a craft. You know, I, I'm single because I don't leave my seat until I find that candidate. Most recruiters coming in, they don't have that mindset. They're like, okay, just let's make a quick placement. So AI does not help the mindset. It makes it, oh, this is easier.

So master the craft, then use AI. Don't use AI to master—

whatever that is, right? Right. AI does not take over the foundational things that you should know.

Yeah, yeah. I think— I don't know if I put this up here— the first question I always ask is, what are you looking for? And yeah, that's, that's absolutely— yeah. So, um, you mentioned craft. Recruiting is a craft.

Yes.

If you had to define a single— because we don't have time for more than one— a single non-negotiable skill that every real recruiter needs to master, what would that one single skill be?

That's hard to say, dude.

How can I know? You gotta pick one. Yeah, one universal. Make it the one thing, you know. So not technology recruiting versus sales recruiting. Think executive recruiting, high volume recruiting. All forms of recruiting, what would be the one non-negotiable skill that every recruiter needs to master? You said it's a craft, so you want to master it. Doesn't mean you have to bring it with you, but as a senior recruiter, to be called a senior recruiter in any particular industry, you must have mastered this.

You're— I, I think people are going to disagree, but because— so let me just explain why I'm going to say this, Right. I was a recruiter initially in the beginning, and then I ported over to sourcing because I realized sourcing is 70% of recruiting. And I don't know why people think sourcing is not recruiting. It certainly is. I think sourcing is the number one thing. Finding candidates, finding candidates. If you don't find candidates, you're not recruiting like that. But that's just me because I am a true sourcer. And I love what I do and I love finding people, but I realize that there's some recruiters and this is why they split the model, Shelly. They split the model from— they have sourcing teams and they have recruiting teams because they understood that sourcing is a huge part of recruiting and maybe recruiters don't have the time to do it because of all the stakeholder conversations, closing out all of that stuff. But I feel like sourcing is is huge. And communication, just like Cassi said, communication and outreaching, that is huge. But finding the candidate— if you're not finding the candidate, you're not recruiting. Like, how are— like, you're not making offers. You have to find the candidate.

Well, there's, there's— so if there's two— go ahead.

Yeah, so, so that's, that's a tricky question because I'm coming from the sourcing perspective versus recruiting. So you're— so from the recruiting perspective, what do you think if we had that model set up where it's sourcing and recruiting, what do you think it is?

Oh, first of all, the reason that sourcing and recruiting are split is because I did that. That was, that was my design.

You did that?

Yeah, it was a long, long time ago when, when I— you gotta remember, I was leading sourcing. I built and led the first sourcing teams in the world.

Shelly, are you serious?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And wait a minute, when I started going out there talking about, um, the specialization of labor, this came up a lot in the conversation, which was Do we have— do we hire sourcers that just do sourcing and, you know, separate the function from recruiting? And the way I always explained it, which is what led to the, the, the schism that we have now, accidentally, not on purpose, was you have 3 choices. You can either have a sourcer that can recruit or a recruiter that can source, as you can just describe now, which is a high-octane, you know, high, higher experienced, you know, recruiter that can do all of that. That's one choice. Or you can have a dedicated function that is sourcing, where that's what they do and they hand things off. Or you can have the hybrid model where you have pods. In other words, that was— so my original intent was for this to be a pod where within the pod you would have one person whose job was to talk to candidates. Not saying that that's a job title or whatever, but like one person's job was to have their calendar was filled up every day, and all they did was talk to candidates that were fed to them by the rest of the pod. So one of the persons would be the talker, and then 2 or 3 of the others would be the typers. They would be doing the searching, doing the outreach, setting up meetings, doing research, intelligence, social media, all these other things. So that's a 2, 3, 4 person pod. People love that idea, but they failed in execution because they failed the number one criteria for these pods is— by the way, where this comes from, if anybody tells you that they have a sourcing pod and they can't explain to you why, it's because they read about it somewhere else. They didn't figure it out on their own. Right. This was figured out on my own, and it was figured out on my own because of just-in-time inventory management, total quality management, and a lot of these business principles where a lot of organizations like WL Gore, for example, do everything in these pods. Pods are dynamic, they're fully deployable, they can be easily shifted. Pod work reduces layoffs, it reduces people leaving because it gives people the ability to switch jobs as they can and they want to. You know, and that doesn't mean going from recruiter to sourcer. That means, hey, I'm gonna, you know, try my hand at this. And so if you own the channels, you own the pods. But what ended up happening was they were like, well, the recruiters don't want to change, so we're going to hire sourcers and we're going to make them serve the recruiters. And that's how you ended up with a schism.

Yeah, and, and that serving stuff I don't do. It's a true partnership. So I'll say this, when I was at Microsoft in 2005, that sourcing model was there. Sourcing. That was you sourcing and recruiting. And not— it's evolved since then because now sourcers are looked at as market intel, feeding data, and still doing all the sourcing. But also I'm getting with the current contract that I'm on, I'm getting leadership coming to me and saying, hey, I need to know the market. And because I've been in the market, so it's evolved even at some of the other big tech companies, it's evolved. Some other companies, it's like you're just in rotation, you're feeding, get that. But it has evolved. So going back to your question, depending on if it's sourcing and recruiting, it's two different number one functions, if that makes sense. For a sourcer, you have to know how to source, you have to find people, engage.

Well, where I was— yeah, where I was going with that is that fundamentally there's two types, two major types of recruiting, recruiting and non-highballing Correct. High-volume recruiting are recruiters that, believe it or not, if you have never experienced high-volume recruiting, think about 300, 400 recs, 300, 400 hires a year.

Okay, I've never done that.

Of course you haven't. And if you're sitting there going, oh my God, I don't know what that looks like, um, I have, and, and I can tell you that there's a gigantic difference, a huge difference. So if in high volume you don't do a lot of what you and I would call finding or sourcing, you do have to know how to work the system, and you do sourcing inside of your own ATS. Because when you have a rec with 300 applicants, you are not reading 300 resumes.

No, you're not.

You have to source within the rec. So it's still finding. So finding applies on both models. But I think the one skill that is universal across all of recruiting and sourcing is questioning. Critical thinking. Why? And you can ask why in a way that sounds like you were being arrogant, like, why do we do that? As in, oh, you're wrong and I'm right. Or you can ask why in the sense of, um, what were the steps that were taken to get here? Because if we're not constantly questioning, we're not going to be able to improve no matter what's going on in the industry.

So, okay, so I, I didn't understand your question. I thought it was— I thought it was candidate-based. So this is for business-based, like like what is the one critical—

The recruiting skill.

The recruiting skill. Critical thinking is absolutely right.

Yep. Critical thinking leads to being able to find people. Why do I have so many applicants? How do I find them? Why am I not finding them? Critical thinking leads to better communication. Why am I not— So critical thinking, I think, is at the root of that. But when you're talking about hard skills that you can teach, that's not one of them.

You the man, Shelly. You the man.

You can't teach that one. So I think what we're seeing here is the accidental recruiters didn't come into the role with critical thinking.

Not at all. They thought it was an easy way to make money and just to transition from whatever they were doing, retail or whatever. And again, I'm not knocking it, but for people that this is my career, it was a little offensive.

Yeah. So who's going to fix this problem? Recruiters aren't going to do it.

No.

Right.

Companies need to do it.

Leadership, the hiring team.

Hiring team.

Where's the accountability?

I don't know. I mean, like, I've seen people actually scale their resume to like a top-level senior recruiter and just add different things in there to make it look— and if you are not— if you have a tight deadline and you need to get someone in, are you really doing the reference check? Are you really figuring out, asking the why? Like, you know, are you really doing that? Are you just hiring because you just need someone? So I don't think it's— I think there are multiple people that can fix this problem. I don't know. I don't think it's the recruiter, obviously, but there's something going on. It doesn't feel good when you think— yeah.

Do you think we're over the hump? Like, do you think we reached peak chaos in accidental recruiting and we're now on the down— on the downslope of that? Meaning we're, you know, we reached peak inefficiency and now that's kind of starting to get fixed.

Yes.

Or do you feel like—

No, no, I think it's getting fixed because companies are realizing that they are losing out. First of all, you can see someone's productivity, right? And you can say, well, this is what their resume said, but they're not producing. We had not one offer in 6 months. So we're starting to see companies, like, question more when you're coming into the interview. Tell me about this. Tell me about that. What's your metrics? What are you— Sourcing per week, what do you— how many interviews do you have? Like asking questions that during the pandemic they weren't asking. They were just like, come on board, bring it on. What's your KPIs? What's your metrics? What are you doing? Okay, at the big tech, just let me say this, at one of the big techs I was sourcing 80 to 120 net new people every single week. Now, not saying they were all fantastic, that, that was the metric, and I felt— I feel like they were feeding feeding their CRM and their ATS. But those are metrics that I bring up in my interviews, and, and, and I, I can— I, I know how to source and net new every single week, whether it was from GitHub, whether Stack Overflow. Like, 80, 80 was— 80 was the number, but you know me, I'm crazy. 120. Did you just say yes?

No, I said yes before.

Yeah, no, no, you said yes I was crazy.

No, I said yes to the number.

I'm trying to find a partner, he might be on here, and Please tell them I'm not crazy.

No, I didn't say yes to the crazy. I said yes to the things before that. Rewind the tape and you'll see.

I know I'm playing, I'm playing.

Um, oh, okay, you're giving me a hard time. Good, good, good. That's— I need that, I need that, because otherwise I just, uh—

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um, so I hear you. I know, I, I get what you're saying, and I think— yeah, I think that we are on the other side of that, or it's like looking like the horizon's clearing up on, on, on this issue. What I want to do is, I want to find out from you what, what you, what you think is kind of in an unfiltered way, the hard truth about right now that recruiters don't want to admit. What's, what's a hard truth about recruiting that we don't want to admit to ourselves?

That it's becoming more maybe automated? Maybe with AI, we're not going to need the level of recruiting and sourcing that we need. I know that's— and again, I don't know if that's a hard truth or not, but that's a topic that I have with my network. Like, you know, AI can build out Boolean strings and X-ray strings and all that good stuff, right? And will companies see the need for us, or will they get to a point where it could just be all automated and they just have you know, maybe 1 or 2 recruiters or 1 or 2, uh, um, recruiting partners that can handle this. And I think that's something that we don't want to think about. I've been doing this since 2003, and I have not— like, I'm thinking of getting into cybersecurity anyway because, you know, I'm an investigator, but I, I can't— I, I, I love what I do, and I, I can't picture not doing recruiting or sourcing. I can't picture it. I'm getting kind of teared up here. I, I love helping people find, you know, their, their, their niche and their, their job. And I love to see when, like, I went to the office, I was in Louisiana last week, and 5 interns, they all went full-time and they all hugged me and I literally cried. Like, that, that's that kind of emotion, just helping someone in their, you know, whether it's beginning or end, and getting that. And it seems a little like it's about me, but it's not. It's like just seeing someone grow, and, and I don't know what I would do without it, and I, and I don't know how I would pivot, but I'm going to have to because I feel that it is going to be very much automated in the future. I, I feel that. Am I wrong? Am I wrong?

Yeah, you're wrong. I, I—

why?

It's— well, automation in any industry is, um, you know, it could be a threat to certain roles in our industry, like in many others. It's more of a threat to the junior kind of position, uh, you know, a more entry-level type of thing, um, which you and I are not— that's obviously not going to affect us, but it could impact that. I think what it would do is it would prevent us from having another accidental recruiter crisis next time around when we have all this hiring. AI can carry some of that weight of the front end of the process that's very low value, highly repetitive, task-driven, formula-based, where, you know, robots can work really, really well. Um, the problem, and this is what we'll have to deal with it when the time comes, is that if you don't have junior entry-level jobs, then how do you get senior recruiters later?

That's true.

You know, I mean, you'll end up with— yeah, you know, so you have to start somewhere, and then that's kind of an— that's That's a big question in, you know, macroeconomically, the impact of AI. Sure, we're gonna reduce some of the labor that is repetitive and robotic.

Right, right.

And that may impact some employment, but really the biggest impact isn't the few jobs that might be lost because those jobs get transferred to something else.

Okay, gotcha.

And that's what happened in the Latin, you know, the internet did that, the industrial revolution did that.

Right.

The wheel did that, the printing press did that, fire did that. You know, every time some new technology comes around, we change and we adapt. But the real challenge is, if we make it so that there's really no entry level anymore, then how do we get— how do you get a senior person?

Yeah, that's true, that's true. I like that.

But it's not going to automate us.

It's not going to—

it's really not going to automate anybody out of existence.

I hope not, Shelly, because I, I see gaps. Prove it to me, please.

When the internet came around and, you know, it was like the big, the big thing, the big deal. They— there were all kinds of, of, um, promises that were made about jobs that were going to be eliminated, and there weren't very many jobs that actually got eliminated. One of the biggest ones that I can recall, because I was there, and what— you actually were there too— is the travel industry. They said the internet's going to eliminate travel agencies. We still have travel agencies. Absolutely. There's still travel agents. So if the internet didn't eliminate travel agents, then how is AI gonna eliminate the entire, all workers in the entire world? Like, it just doesn't make any sense.

It, it wouldn't make sense. But do you think that number 2, okay, go ahead.

Yeah, ask.

No, no, go ahead.

Number 2, when was the last time you went to a doctor?

Oh, 2 days ago. Okay.

Did you get your blood drawn? Sometimes they do that for blood tests.

I, I think I did. I had a, a allergic reaction to bananas. Can you believe that?

Yeah, no, that's interesting. It's a— it's an herb. But anyway, so can you imagine?

I almost died, Shelley.

That is bizarre.

But I did— I did not have my EpiPen and my face—

just bananas, nothing else.

I had— I had a shake and I didn't realize there was bananas in it, and my head got this big. And that's insane. I swear to God, my daughter, she was driving like crazy to get me, and I jumped out, and they gave me my EpiPen. But I was like, yeah, I've never heard of that before. Yeah, yeah, a banana. Um, yeah, no potential for me.

Where I was gonna go with this is, can you imagine a phlebotomist coming to you that is a robot? How— wait, how fast and how loud would you be screaming? How fast would you run and how long will you be screaming? How loud would you be screaming when you see that? It's not— I'm sorry, nobody's gonna— no robot's gonna take my blood. I, I've, I've had my blood taken a lot because I, you know, the cancer treatment and everything like that. Yeah, and there's some really good phlebotomists that you don't feel anything, and there's some ones that really hurt, and there's some ones that can hurt you so bad that they leave you bruises and cause hemorrhages.

Correct.

And this is a very basic medical procedure. If you can't automate that with a robot, then you're not going to replace every worker in the world. I'm sorry, that's true. You're just not. Okay, so travel agents and phlebotomists is my philosophy. But anyways, the reality is that We do need to question our role because I think our role becomes more of orchestration, planning, strategy, and problem-solving and judgment. So where we excel is in the adaptability of judgment and creativity and innovation. And when I say we, I mean humans. So there's still going to be a role for us there. The truth is, the reality is that you don't want to do the job of a recruiter that would be outsourced to AI because you probably never really ever did that, right? That is very mind-numbing, time-consuming.

Yes.

You know, it's, it's not the job you'd want. And so if, if AI eliminates some of these really bad jobs that nobody really wants, okay, let's do it, you know. So maybe instead of being, um, you know, high volume, low value-added recruiter, you become an orchestrator and a planner with a couple of, you know, and an advisor. Exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that. I like that, Shelly. You're, you're pretty smart. You didn't realize that until today.

Oh God, this one doesn't fit in here. Kanga says— I'm gonna have to read it a little bit because it says, um, are questioning and critical— are questioning and critical thinking skills top skills in recruiting? Yes, they're foundational. Great recruiters don't just follow, they question assumptions. What I was saying, do they really need this? Diagnose problems, and interpret signals, candidate behavior, hiring behavior, market data. Without this, you are just executing, not influencing. And actually, because of that distinction that Hanga makes is the judgment. And that is why we're not going to be, you know, we're not going to be outsourced. But there are parts of our job that don't—

that will be, will be, that are redundant.

30 years, Chrissy, for 30 years I have been chasing that. I have come up with— you just said, you know, I'm so smart. Actually, the truth is I'm not smart, I'm just extremely lazy. David Marr will tell you that. I am so lazy.

That's true.

Yeah, he'll, he'll attest to that. I am so lazy that I will spend 8 hours trying to figure out how to automate something that takes 5 minutes so I don't have to do that thing ever again. Okay, so I've been doing that since the beginning of time with with VB scripts in Excel, with macros on my computer, with Power Automate. So yeah, there are parts of my job that I don't want to have to do because they are mind-numbingly boring and have zero value, but they have to get done, right? Right. So can we automate that, please? I would like that because I would like to spend more time on the other things where, you know, I can't automate. And I know which ones those are. I've been trying to figure that out. So I think that that's kind of the answer. I do, I do have a, a question that I want to kind of— let's just call it, um, I don't know if it's a closing question or not, but it definitely is the pinnacle of everything we talked about today so far. So let me put this to you. Let's say that I gave you— let's say I hired you and I gave— I put you in charge of a team full of accidental recruiters. What would you fix first in the first 30 days?

Their mindset.

So fire them all. Gotcha.

Absolutely. No, no, no, I would not fire them all.

What's the mindset?

Well, I would— I, first of all, I would ask them, you know, what— why recruiting, right? Why recruiting? That's important to their why. And based on that, we'll just kind of just take them through, take them down a rabbit hole of the expectations and the things that, you know, you would need to do. And before we even start training, I, and I don't want to call them accidental recruiters because it just sounds harsh.

But so let's soften it a bit. The idea is this. You're new to the team. And I'm putting you in charge of, let's say, you know, a team of 20 recruiters that have these backgrounds that we were talking about. And we, you know, we're not— the option is not let's fire them all. That was, that was just a joke. It was harsh. Um, you've got to do something with this team to make them productive. So what would be the first thing you would do to get a hodgepodge team of, you know, inexperienced recruiters, um, working well?

You know, again, ask them the why. Figure out what the their strong points are, what they've done, take them through AIRS training. I'm sorry, AIRS certification. I love it, I love it. And I think that's something that we should implement. So, you know, internet training and all that stuff, but really just understanding their passions and the industries and then aligning them to that, training them on how to speak to people, outreaches, interview questions, like really digging deep and getting them trained and, ready to go. Like, that's what I would do.

I, I, so I heard the, the first thing I heard— I don't know if this is the, the number one, but I do want to get— you want to get an answer to the, the number one thing you would do is listen to them as to why recruiting. Yeah, okay, okay, why recruit?

Why are you here?

That would be the one thing you start.

Okay, I want to know.

Yeah, what are the answers they're going to give you? Do you know? Do you have any idea? I mean, I'm not saying you would, but what kind of answers would we expect?

If I'm being honest, maybe most would just be like, it just seemed like an easy entry, low barrier to entry. You know, I just, I wanted to do something different. I would be looking for— I want like, like when I got into it, I want to help people find jobs. I want to help people, you know, refine their resumes. I want to be an advisor at some point. And I got into it I actually got into it because I needed to pay my student loans off in Canada, and then I loved it, right? So again, I'm not knocking it. You get into it for different reasons, but I would definitely get to the bottom of why, and, and, and that would trigger how they would be trained, right? How— what, what, what you would— how you would navigate around their training and what they need is based on their why. Okay, now I'm going to ask you the question. What, what would you do?

What would be the first thing that you would do with, uh, with the exact same situation?

Correct. Yeah, correct.

Um, I would— the first thing I would do would be to conduct an assessment, or like, not assessment in the— sometimes the word assessment has a bad connotation. I don't mean it that way. I mean, um, like a skills inventory, an inventory, right? Just like, just like if any other—

any—

you give me any other business, like, literally the first thing that I'm going to do is, what do we got to work with, right?

Right.

So if you're getting a factory, you're going to want to know what are the machines that are there, right? And in our industry, it's all about intellectual property. So, you know, my, my first thing would be like, let's, let's get it— let's take an inventory of what we've got here. And, and I would do an assessment. I actually have an assessment tool that I use for that, and there's a mini version of it on the website that's free at TSI University. And you can, you can take— anybody can take that, your team can take that, and kind of gives you an idea as to what your strengths are in the, in the different areas. So I would actually just put everybody through that because then, like you said, I would know where to train, where to develop. There's certain things that would come out of that would be, for example, if somebody on that team had a particular affinity for, let's say, search, because that's just how their mind works, I would develop that expertise and have them become the subject matter expert on searching and, you know, kind of lead, you know, team chats on that with the rest of the team. Whereas if somebody had like a facility for talking— that sounds terrible, they can talk— no, like if somebody had like a persuasive modality and they were good on the phone, I would encourage them to teach. So I would kind of figure out what are you guys good at, and then where are the gaps, and how do we fix our own gaps? Like the, you know, the searcher can teach the talker how to search and the talker can teach the searcher how to search and so on.

Correct. So we're saying survey is probably better.

Inventory survey.

Yeah, survey. Yeah, it's better than inventory. Yeah, absolutely. Just like I was saying, figuring out who your team is and then that's how your training would go and would be allocated.

See, but you started from the motivation. I, and I'm not saying that's right or wrong, I mean, that's a great idea. I started from the What do we got now?

And the skill sets and the—

yeah, you could really start with the motivation before you even do that other one. Because now that I think about it, the, the, the inventory, the skills inventory is really about the skills. If they're not even motivated to be there in the first place, um, we need to address that, right?

Can you read David's, uh— I just seen it pop up. David is just so— David, stop.

The, um, I don't know many people who woke up one day and said, hey, I want to be a recruiter when I grow up.

It's true. We're not saying that, David. We're not saying that that's not true. I mean, I fell into it because the first recruiting job that I had was with the People Bank in Toronto. And I just remember thinking, I have these student loans that I need to pay off, and I fell into it. But I really— when I fell into it, I really fell into it, and I learned all that I could. So that's all we're saying. Like, I didn't fudge my resume or anything, and I learned from the top people. So that's all we're saying. Like, Keep it 100.

The motivation, and then, and then the skills inventory. I think that's, that's a really good, yeah, approach.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, well, that's, um, thanks for that. Okay, now the big closer. This is it because we're running out of time. Now I don't know—

I know what you're gonna ask me. I didn't even do— okay, go ahead.

No, that's actually— I stopped doing that.

Okay, you sure?

I did because, um, I'm actually like books for the end of June. So I might start doing that again. I'll come back to you on that one. But this is actually a real closer.

Are you sure?

Okay, I'm sure. Yeah, if you got, if you got names, let me know.

I got a name, but like, I got a name. Steve Bastin. I'll send it to you. He's, he's amazing. He's amazing.

On it. Good. So you, you did your homework and you got ahead of it.

I sure did.

Here's my whopper.

Okay.

Is the recruiting industry— I mean sourcing, recruiting, the whole, you know, acquisition industry— getting worse or getting louder?

What do you mean worse? Well, what does that mean?

You were yourself with like, I don't know if I really want to, you know, I'm thinking about going into cybersecurity because I don't want to hear— so what's motivating you by getting out of the industry? You're not the only one. I've talked to a lot of people that were like, maybe 'Man, things are just not— they're not going the way I want them to go, and maybe I need to look at another.' So whether it actually happens or not, folks are processing whether or not the industry is kind of changing to the point where they may not want to be in it. So that's my question: is it really the industry changing into something we don't really like, or is it just getting louder?

I think it's getting louder. And then again, a lot of the accidental recruiters— and I mean that in the softest way possible. That's kind of pushed me to the side. Plus, I'm, I'm getting up there, right? And I'm noticing— and you've noticed this too, you know— that, you know, when you're applying to things and you, you have this long history, you know, that's looked at, and it's not always generous. They're not always saying, oh, this person has rich history. It's like, oh my goodness. So that's my personal reason for maybe exiting, but I don't see an exit right now. I, I love what I do. I really do love helping people. And, um, and maybe it's just because I'm used to it. Maybe that's what it is. I'm just— I've just been doing it and I'm used to it. But it is getting louder and it's making me think. Yeah. And so, and it's making me think about maybe I need to shift. And because I'm a natural investigator and, um, a little dark, cybersecurity probably would be the way to go. And I'm a Scorpio, so that's— you know how we do.

Watch out, people.

Uh, wow.

Okay, well, you heard it here first, folks. Chrissy, thank you so much for being part of this. I really appreciate it. I know it took us a while to orchestrate, but yeah, so glad you're here, folks. You can connect with Chrissy at LinkedIn, Exceptional Recruiter. That's pretty easy to remember, linkedin.com/in/exceptionalrecruiter. And I would encourage you to check out tsiuniversity.com for that snapshot that I told you about. Um, the snapshot. Yeah, the snapshot is the skills inventory that I was talking about, so go check that out. tsiuniversity.com/course/snapshot. Thank you so much again, everybody.

We love you, we love you, we love you. Keep doing what you're doing, and let's not wait a year or 6 months to do this again, please. Let's— we love you.

Awesome. All right, we'll do this again soon, folks. Uh, be kind to yourselves, and we will see you back here next week on the next Shelly's Alley.

Bye, guys!