🎙️ ResearchGoddess Live on Shally's Alley🎙️

Hey, all right everybody, welcome! You are live on Shally's Alley, and this is the first episode in July because we skipped the 5th of July on account of it being, well, the 5th of July. I don't know about you, but most of the people I know were either taking the day off or, um, you know, just kind of heads down. So we decided to just do a replay. So actually, welcome to July on my behalf as the, I guess, the world ambassador of July. Very, very excited. I can't even— I have no words to describe the excitement that I feel with our special guest today. Amy Beth has been— I just want to say, I'm gonna— don't blush. I'm gonna embarrass you a little bit here. It has been a very distinct pleasure watching Amy Beth's career over the last, I don't know, 20 years maybe. I'm not trying to age you here, maybe 18 years or something like that. We first met, I think, when you were a rookie in a staffing agency, and then you quickly grew through discovering your passion for sourcing. You grew in that role and then went on to a different agency. And then from there, I mean, MB Beth's had, you know, years of experience at companies like AT&T, Microsoft, SAP, HP, GE. Hey, a lot of two-letter companies there. Nike, Walmart, and ServiceNow. And now currently she is the Director of Global Talent Sourcing for Electronic Arts. How fun is that? The gaming company. And I forgot to mention the one thing that is, you know, it is kind of above and beyond all those roles. She was actually one of the original editors of the Fordyce Letter, which was an ERE media company that wrote a newsletter for staffing firms and got absorbed into later on SourceCon. And I believe that also led to you being kind of the, the official SourceCon editor, and that's one tough job. So I mean, you know, we met at SourceCon and your career just kind of took off. I have been a huge fan, as you know, for many, many years, and it's been a pleasure to see how all of these things have evolved over time, which brings me to the reason that I wanted to have you on the show today, to talk a little bit about centralized sourcing. But first, why don't you say hi to the audience? The people that are out there on the internet. Hi everybody.

Hi everyone.

Here is— I'm gonna put Amybeth's, uh, thing. Here we go. Sorry, what was that?

I, I just said thank you.

Oh man, it's a pleasure and honor. We're not gonna have enough time. We're gonna run out of time today.

I know it.

Um, it's just been so fun watching your, your career and, um, and all your achievements. I mean, just everything that you've been able to do. Amybeth and I share a passion for sourcing and also for building centralized sourcing teams as a specialty, sourcing as a specialty, and building centralized teams as a specialty. Which, by the way, because even though we share that passion and we're both big believers in it, doesn't mean that everyone should have a centralized sourcing team. You know, there's pros and cons, there's the right place to do it, that, you know, so it's not like we're like, everybody should do it. But if you're gonna do it, this is like one of the preeminent experts in the world that we've got here. So Welcome, welcome. So, how— what's it like working for a gaming company? Are you like— are you forced to play games all day?

I'm the world's coolest aunt, first and foremost. Right. Nephews, goddaughters, yeah. I'm the world's coolest aunt working at a gaming company. Yeah, it's, you know, it's definitely interesting, you know, working for, you know, a game developer. I think, Each of the roles that I've had over the course of my career has an interesting and unique element to it. So I like to try to find the learning opportunities in each place here. So I've learned that I'm the world's coolest aunt working here.

Were you a gamer before? I mean, has electronic games been part of your life in the past or are you just kind of getting into it now?

Not necessarily games, but I have always loved computers. I mean, I had a Commodore 64 when I was a little kid, and I do remember having an Atari when I was very young that had Pong on it. So, you know, games were part of my, you know, experience and love with, you know, love of computers. So I've just always enjoyed having access to a lot of information, which the computer allowed for. So over the years, and that's actually how I got my first professional job working in talent acquisition as a researcher. My sister-in-law called me and she's like, hey, I know you like working with computers. I'm like, boy, do I, right? We have a research— Yes, exactly. Yep.

Jason says hi.

Hey, Jason.

Um, awesome. Yeah, so, you know, I've similar background. I've been, you know, a computer user since the very, very early days, back when it was still a brown screen, you know, yellow text on a brown screen. And I think that may— you're right, it probably did influence— it probably did influence why I got the job in recruiting, because I was, uh, very comfortable with computers. But the job certainly didn't require— when I started, didn't require knowing computers. In fact, it was a Lotus Notes environment that only replicated email once a day. So like, your email was just about as good as postal, uh, letters where you had to wait for them to come in, uh, during the day. So Fun times. Well, jumping into the subject matter at hand. So you've now been in a position to be an influencer, a manager, and a builder of centralized sourcing teams. And in particular, you know, the specialization of the function in creating what some people refer to as a COE or a center of excellence. In, in this, in this journey, what are some of the biggest challenges that you faced, uh, or just a— what is a big challenge you faced when bringing together sourcers into a COE?

Well, um, one of the biggest challenges is, um, having a consistent way of defining talent sourcing. By the time most companies get to the point where they see the need for having a COE. There have been talent sourcers hired into different teams for a lot of different reasons. So that is, that in and of itself is a huge challenge. When talent sourcers get hired into, you know, different teams, they're going to have different responsibilities based on what that leader sees as a need for talent sourcing. Some talent sourcers are you know, research and lead generation. Some talent sourcers do some initial outreach, but with responses, those, you know, prospects get handed over to recruiting partners. Some sourcers do screening. And honestly, I've seen situations where sourcers actually own requisitions, which makes me scratch my head. I'm like, isn't that a recruiter? So leaders will hire talent sourcing for a lot of different reasons. So that's one of the biggest challenges I think to overcome.

So fair to say then, if you are considering building one from scratch or something I've seen a lot of companies do lately, consolidating, as you said, various sourcers scattered throughout the organization into a COE, whether you're building it or you're re-engineering one or whatever, fair to say one of the first considerations should be how you're going to define what sourcing is, or more importantly, what the role is that they will perform, right? Like, what's, what's their focus going to be? Um, because there may be different, different definitions. Now, is it your opinion? Um, it's, it's mine, so, you know, fair warning, I'm not trying to lead the witness. Uh, my opinion is that you should declare that specialty and, um as you, as you're building out that COE, create workflows and, you know, write down the, the process. Like, for example, I create a document that I'm then able to share with hiring managers and recruiters that say, you know, here's our 2 or 3 services that we offer. Here's how something qualifies to receive our support. Almost like a— I hate to say an SLA, because that can turn into a bad word, but it's a very simplified, like one slide PowerPoint slide SLA, right? We do this, if you do that, we do this and like keep it simple. Is it your opinion that you have to have something like that defined in order to have a COE or can a COE serve the needs of the many, so to speak?

Well, I mean, you can try to serve the needs of everybody, but you're gonna be spread so thin that you're gonna accomplish nothing. So I don't think SLA is a dirty word at all.

It's just interpreted by some people as like, oh, I need an attorney for an SLA. No, you don't. Yeah.

Yeah. You, SLAs are important, not just for setting up a sourcing COE, but also like within partnerships. I mean, if you are purposefully having a talent sourcing function that is defined differently from your recruiting function and from your coordination function, then within partnerships, you need to have some agreements of, you know, when do we end the partnership? When do we hand candidates over to a different person so they can continue on their journey? What are the goals that we want to accomplish together in this partnership? Without that kind of stuff, then your partnership really has no end. And it's just whenever somebody says, yeah, exactly, we need this, we need this—

squeaky wheel syndrome, right?

Yes, yeah, exactly.

And you end up chasing your own tail. Um, so we— there's been a lot of conversation over the years since I, you know, when I first set foot on the scene in the late '90s and tried to, you know, rally people around the specialization of sourcing, which wasn't its own full-time job way back then. And now, so literally 24, 25 years of the same conversation around, you know, um, what is, what is a sourcer and what do they do? Are they, like you said, sometimes they screen, sometimes they don't. There's been many different versions of that, all the way from, you know, it's an entry-level function for people who want to grow up and be recruiters to it's a really specialized function. But regardless of how you define it, do you feel like there's a maybe one or two specific examples of how sourcing has improved results in an organization outside of direct hire? So in other words, you know, a recruiter has responsibility for opening a rec and filling it. Assuming that the recruiter's job is to fill the rec, and assuming that the sourcer's job is not to necessarily fill that rec, what outside of filling that seat, what examples have you come across where the sourcer or the sourcing team has contributed to improved results throughout the entire TA function?

Yeah, I— that's a great question. I think, you know, one of the biggest benefits of having a talent sourcing function is better understanding of your external market. Particularly if your sourcers are able to focus in domain areas, it allows them to dig deep into different talent communities and really understand the skills that make people good at what they do, the companies who hire good talent, and who develop good talent. And all that information is really helpful to bring back to business leaders and say, hey, we might be missing out on some talent because they are gaining skills outside of our industry in, in different places, different locations, different industries. So I think that's one very prominent way of talent sourcing adding value to a hiring process. Another one is helping to ensure that your selection pool is made up of a lot of different, you know, opinions, a lot of different experiences, a lot of different perspectives. Ultimately, hiring managers need to choose the best people to join their teams, and talent sourcing can do a lot of top-of-funnel focus on looking outside of preconceived notions. I think John Vlasilica says casting a wider aperture is how he likes to frame that, but really making sure that you have a diverse pool of talent from which to choose the best person. And, you know, I've shared with team members over the years, just because your candidate isn't the one who gets hired doesn't mean that you didn't contribute an exceptional amount of value to the process by which that person was hired, because you made it possible for a fair evaluation to lead to that decision by introducing additional talent. So there's a lot of, you know, those are two just very prominent things that I think talent sourcing adds as value in the process.

Yeah, I agree. I think that, that last one, which is kind of the second to last one and the last one dovetail into each other, um, is a hugely under, undervalued, underappreciated aspect. Um, and to, to sort of explain that a little bit, and here's a comment from one of our, um, audience members: could it make a company more well known if you're smaller? Yeah, definitely a great place to start with brand, uh, engagement and reputation building. For sure, I totally agree with that. And I was going to kind of piggyback on what you were saying and maybe bring, bring those ideas together by clarifying that even though there has been over, over the years efforts to do diversity sourcing— I'm using air quotes because for those of you that may not know, I, I credited with starting the very first diversity sourcing team back in 2003 at Google, where we had the team had a focus of hiring female engineers in a prominently male-dominated field, computer science. And over the years, there's been these efforts to create diversity sourcing. But I think at the very core, before that and always, sourcing has been the original way to improve diversity because of what you just said, Amy Beth, which is you're out there identifying people and inviting them to apply. So, it's really this simple. If your traditional advertising methods for getting the word out that you have job openings are reaching a specific audience, you're limited to the talent pool that is available in that audience. And sourcing can broaden, as you said, or widen that aperture and reach into other areas, increasing the variability of the talent that's coming in. And that alone is organic diversity. So even though there's sometimes misguided efforts to do diversity sourcing of a very specific, like, you know, only females, or I think sourcing in general is a very good way to improve the selection. Because if you only have one candidate, it's really hard for a hiring manager to make a decision. They need to have 2 or 3 candidates to compare and make sure that we've done our due diligence, that we've looked in the market thoroughly. And if there's only one candidate, that's kind of not going to happen. So if the sourcer brought in a candidate that helped the interview process move along because now you have a choice, that in and of itself I think is a huge win. I totally agree.

And I think it's, I think it's good to note that talent sourcing, I mean, it's both a noun and a verb. So your noun is your talent sourcing function. Not every company is blessed to have talent sourcing functions, but talent sourcing as a verb is something that everybody can and should do when they're involved in hiring managers. So, you know, You know, there's so much that we can talk about with this.

Right, exactly. Yeah. So you, you source candidates and sourcing is a function, both.

Yeah.

Like you recruit candidates and recruiting is a function. I mean, it's— there's some parallels there. Have you felt like there's, there's been any improvement in consistency of results when you've implemented sourcing as opposed to before? Like, you know, a before and after picture. Has, has sourcing had sourcing the verb, but has a sourcing function or centralized function had an effect in consistency, or is that not really an area that you look at?

Years ago, there was an ad of a cowboy who was a cat herder. I don't know if you remember that ad or if people watching this do, but that ad just made me laugh and laugh because It kind of feels like that sometimes when you're trying to centralize any function. You've got a bunch of, you know, really excellent, talented people who are running in a lot of different directions. And by giving the function a consistent definition in and of itself, that helps with, you know, getting everybody running together in the same general direction. And the more you can, you know, just kind of introduce some, some foundational principles with consistency, um, the, the better it becomes. It becomes a more efficient and arguably a more effective, uh, type of a function in doing that.

So it has that sort of effect, the, you know, ancillary effect of the streamlining of sourcing has the ancillary effect sometimes of, um, making other processes around it more consistent. Because of an improved definition of role and improved definition of workflow, those kinds of things. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Not every company is ready for that though. I mean, I think a lot of it has to do with company size. I think smaller organizations, you've got to have people who wear multiple hats, who do 360 recruiting and in some cases, like in startups, are also your HR person. As companies grow, become more complicated, that's when I think having sourcing as a standalone function becomes more necessary. And I think it kind of mirrors the way that the function of recruiting has evolved over time. Yeah, you know, it used to be called personnel, right? And as time has marched on and recruitment has become more complicated, there's more laws that you have to consider, there's globalization, of, you know, companies and it's just, it's become more complicated. So the need for these specialty types of functions has evolved along with it.

Yeah. More complicated, more complex, then more specialization is required. And I mean, honestly, ever since I first took the stage and said, you know, sourcing is a dedicated function, it's always been about, it's a specialization. It's not, I mean, it is sui generis in that it is its own field, And although there's different definitions, there is the need for it to be a specialization. Like you said, recruiters also source and sourcers also recruit. But when you have a dedicated specialized function like say, for example, here's a doozy, employment marketing, right? You can't make the argument that employment marketing is something that everybody should do. When you're small enough and you're doing the whole function 360, then yeah, obviously. But once you get to a certain point and you have dedicated budget, dedicated, you know, you need to have a specialized function. So it's really the same thing. And now we're seeing, at least from my point of view, sourcing itself has had kind of a branching into specialized functions. Like you said before, sometimes it's research only, sometimes it's the automation part of, you know, engage. So like engagement and nurturing leads and things like that. Sometimes it's more about social media, etc. So we're starting to see that, I think, in my opinion. What do you think?

Absolutely. And I hate, like, tagging the word only onto that, onto research, because research is such an important part of talent sourcing. It's that initial curiosity, you know, component of trying to make sure you're working in the right places, that you're looking at the appropriate locations and skill skill sets and things like that. So, you know, I like research to me is, is a, a really critical role today. And I'm not talking like lead generation type of research, talking like talent intelligence, sourcing research, market insights, things that are going to help you make sure that you are focusing on the right places, the right skill sets, and not missing opportunities to explore a little bit outside of your own industry assumptions.

Yeah, so that would be more like, um, yeah, it's competitive intelligence. Um, yeah, I, I had, uh, remember Susie Tonini?

Yes.

Yeah, she was on the show recently and she's transitioned from, um, you know, sourcing in the recruiting realm to essentially doing that for business intelligence and sales. And she's reporting to the sales department now. And just goes to show you that, you know, it's, it's a, it's a skill set that's transferable and helps you pursue other opportunities if you're so inclined. But it definitely is much more than just the, you know, finding of candidates. I mean, finding of candidates is part of it. Research also doesn't have to necessarily lead into a candidate; it could lead into a talent pool or a geography, target companies, and so on.

Yeah, yeah.

Have you, um, as you've been, as you've been centralizing here and before, um, I, I've— every time I've tried to create or successfully created a central sourcing team at, you know, companies like Google and Microsoft and Fiserv, I've, I've always found personally that there's a bit of a motivational gap in the transition. And that is to say, like, when you have sourcers that are all over the place and you're bringing them into a center of excellence, there seems to— this could just be me— that there seems to be a bit of a time period of adjustment where the team loses motivation, things get frustrating. Have you found that? And if so, do you have the cure? And can you put it in a bottle?

That's, that's just change management. I mean, I mentioned earlier that when, when you're ready to have to start thinking about centralizing sourcing, having that definition set up as a first step is really important because people will have been hired in for a lot of different reasons. And what comes with that is different career development aspirations. And that's fine. Like I, you know, support whatever you want to do, to grow yourself. This is how the function is going to be defined here. So, you know, if they don't match, then it's good to help people, you know, try to find something that is going to match what they desire to grow into. And I think that that's, that's a real important part of this is, is understanding like why, why did, did you get hired into a talent sourcing role? What were your thoughts and your career development aspirations in coming into this role? And do they or don't they match with how we're going to be defining this function? I think it's good to give people those opportunities to understand and make some decisions for themselves. This feels aligned with what I desire to do, let's keep going. This doesn't feel aligned with what I desire to do, is there a way that I can rotate into another team or something? Like that, right? Right.

Yeah, that helps. So it's, so essentially it's like take a page from, you know, change management and, and learn from that and apply it to what we do, but also go back to starting with that definition of sourcing and, uh, and look for, look for alignment, right? They may not be aligned when they come into it. Like they might say, well, that's not what I was hired to do. I, I used to, you know, do all the scheduling and now I don't do that, or You know, and say, okay, well, what did you like about that? Is there something similar to that that we can do that will give you job satisfaction? Or do you feel like you can transfer into a different skill set that'll apply? And, you know, and just kind of find a way to— rather than what I'm saying, I guess to correct myself, rather than shoehorning them in, right, find a way to align them in a way that matches what their objectives are, or enough of a change that isn't gonna feel like it's too much change, but will help them do the job. And if not, then, you know, help them find a transition out. Okay, that's helpful. Yeah.

There's the other side of that too, and of what are your partners used to and how is this going to disrupt the workflow of recruiting partners that you work with? So, you know, it's, and, I don't have a cure for this. This is something where you just, you have to accept that over time it's gonna be difficult. You're going to have some new habits that need to be formed. You're probably gonna have to repeat yourself an awful lot. Talking with partners, talking with your peers, making sure people understand the why behind the changes that are being made, I think is very important. And the earlier you can bring partners along on the journey in making those decisions, the better. The last several times I've gone through this and gone through a centralization exercise, we've done design thinking upfront and included representatives from recruiting and sourcing and leadership to ask questions like, What do you think talent sourcers should be responsible for? Where do you think talent sourcing should measure success? Where do you think talent sourcing should spend most of their time doing activities? And have people walk through answering those questions together, mapping it out and showing where, you know, we have different opinions about a lot of different things. And I think that's an important part of getting this right.

Yeah, okay. I like that a lot. Design thinking. That's something I haven't thought— I know what you mean by design thinking, but I haven't thought of it that way. Um, so kind of like I'm translating it for myself here. So begin with the end in mind. So the end of this, you know, with the goal after this is built, you know, after transition, the goal is to improve efficiency, improve, uh, speed, whatever. There's probably a strategic goal that drove the decision. Whether that's cost reduction, speed increase, access to new markets, whatever, but that's the goal. So the design thinking is like, all right, well, here's what we need to do. What can we do to get to, you know, what can we do that will help us get there? And then ask for input to try to build something that satisfies not only the goal, but also the stakeholders kind of, what's the word I'm looking for, their image of what what the team should do? What's that called? Their vision or if they don't have one, at least, you know, get the word out on what the vision is. Speaking about that communication. So post design thinking, you have now, I don't want to say you've established because that's as if like it's already, you know, it's never done. It's, there's always going to be evolution and change, but you get past the, all right, everybody's in one team now. How important is strong communication? And you're probably gonna say very important. So maybe what I need to ask is, how do you maintain strong communication? Like, what do you do to bolster communication with recruiters, leadership, hiring managers? What methods do you use for that?

A lot of it you had mentioned earlier, process documentation is is important. However, it's good to know how interested in documentation consumption your partners are. Honestly, this has been the biggest challenge for me in going through doing, you know, developing COEs at a few different companies. It's the post I guess, kind of launch of a COE and continuing to maintain that constant communication.

That's why I'm asking.

You almost have to act like a PR person in order to— Yeah. And it can be— I mean, it is just literally repeating yourself over and over again, and it's exhausting. Particularly for people who I have noticed tend to gravitate towards sourcing, very logical, very methodical. So when you think logically, you share something with somebody, you assume that they see the logic also and that you don't have to continuously, you know, like repeat, you know, why this is important and everything. So that can, it can be really frustrating.

That's why I was asking, 'cause I ran into that. I've, you know, I've built, I've had— I've been fortunate enough to build sourcing in, in organizations where it was desperately needed, and, and they were like, oh my God, we're so glad you're here, right? I mean, literally no questions asked. Like, we're so grateful that we've been able to actually— been able to put this together. And, you know, um, I'm not gonna say blank check, but as long as you're doing okay, they're not gonna kick you out the door because it was really very clear that they needed it. I've been in other organizations where part of the company needed it and part of the company didn't need it. And the part that didn't need it was like, why do we have to quote unquote pay for it? Not directly, but in other ways. And so there's a bit of resistance there, which led me to make the mistake of being lazy and going down the path of serving the ones that needed it and kind of not, you know, maybe not doing so much for the other teams that didn't really need it but could have used it. Just didn't, you know, really help them all that much because they just didn't really want it. It was like you would send them candidates and be like, "Nah." So, it's demotivating. And I've been in organizations where they didn't even— most of the organization didn't even know what it was, didn't know they needed it, didn't think they needed it, but desperately needed it. And you're sitting there clinging to the idea that you guys are going to fail if you don't get this right because, you know, look at the directories. Here's the map of where you're going, right? Candidate application decline, candidate interview decline, requisitions increase, like more reqs, less candidates. I mean, like, where do you— how do you think these lines are going to end up, right? You know, many reqs, no candidates. And the biggest frustration I have— sorry, the whole point of this was to explain why I asked the question, which was I Recently ran into an organization where I found myself having calls with directors and leaders of business units, divisions, departments, going over a one-slide Google Slide that described the sourcing and recruiting process and how they intersected and all that. And after a while, about a year of doing it, I finally kind of just, I decided this is not, wait, this may not work for you, but for me it worked. This is not my job. I'm here to, to, to complete this. The goal that we have wasn't for me to convince people that sourcing is needed. The goal was this other strategic goal. So I actually worked with the recruiters and ended up getting very involved in their lives and empowering them to communicate that. So they would then show up to calls with hiring managers. And introduce the sourcing team and the sourcing process when they thought, when the recruiters thought that there was going to be a need for it. Sometimes, there wasn't, right? Sometimes, they would introduce sourcing and talk about it and then they'd post the job. Plenty of candidates applied. Job was filled. Sourcing never got engaged. But by doing that, when there was a need for sourcing, hiring managers had already heard about it. And so, it became less of a PR nightmare for me, um, by kind of distributing the work. Now, I didn't live long enough to know if, um, ultimately that would have had the net change that I needed, but it felt a lot better, and it felt like I had a lot less work. I'm saying, like, just kind of deputizing other people to talk about it, even though I'm the leader of the function, deputizing other people to talk about the function so I didn't have to repeat myself over And that also, you know, part of change management is helping your team to also embrace and understand and be able to communicate the why in order to do that.

And that can be— it can be challenging for everybody involved. I mean, you know, one of the other, I guess, challenging components of centralizing a team is is choosing a system of record from probably dozens that are being used because everybody has their own preference, right? And even just doing that and helping to explain why to your team as well as your partners can be super challenging. And it just, it can feel like such a grind, like, oh, I'm so tired of, all of the administrative stuff that we have to do to get the ball rolling on this. But, you know, it's constant reminder of the why, like, why are we doing this? We're doing this so that we have data in the appropriate places so that we can show the value of the work that we're doing and continue to work on interesting, you know, projects, doing domain-based sourcing, doing, you know, rec-based partnerships for critical roles, developing market insights to, you know, help our teams not focus just on, you know, pedigree and like figure out where our skills exist in the world. But you have to do, it's like learning an instrument, right? Like you have to do the scales, you have to do your warmups, you have to know the basics and you have to get those right in order to get to the really fun stuff, which is the performance.

Yeah, and then the experimentation and improving and constantly growing. And yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people in sourcing, I don't want to speak for everybody, but it's one of, if not one of the majors, certainly a motivating factor. That whole thrill of solving the puzzle and the discovery and things like that. So it makes it, it's part of what's, I think, fun about the job. May not be for everybody, but I think so.

Well, you bring up a good point. I think this is a, you know, can versus should kind of a thing too. Like, just because you say you can source doesn't mean you should, depending upon how your organization defines sourcing. You want to have, you know, people who have a passion for that kind of work. You probably remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books from like back in the the '70s and early '80s, I think. I absolutely loved those books. There's a few different happy endings in those books that you read up to a certain point and you get to choose a path to take. Some of them are going to take you to a really bad place. Some of them are going to help you to find that, that really positive ending. And I kind of feel like that is how a lot of us kind of stumbled into talent sourcing.

Choose your own path.

We all come from such random backgrounds, but along the way, like, we have discovered a passion for doing the research and we have a curiosity and, you know, a lot of us enjoy critical thinking. I mean, I liked science fair when I was a kid. I liked thinking about, you know, doing experiments and, you know, is this going to work or is that going to work? What's my hypothesis? Can I prove my hypothesis or is it going to be wrong? I mean, you You know, there's different types of mentalities that really, you know, kind of cause you to gravitate toward talent sourcing.

Yeah, a lot of A/B testing. That's something I've always done. A/B testing. I think that the whole choose your own adventure books is how we ended up with the Oregon Trail, one of the first computer games, 'cause it was like—

That's interesting. And I love that game.

Right? You found a cactus. Do you A, A, walk into it, or B, walk around it. It's like literally choose your own story. That's great. So, other than staying well caffeinated with, if you don't mind, shameless plug for your favorite coffee company, BoneFrogCoffee.com, from which I understand you have a standing order for coffee. So, you and I have the same thing. We're members of the mail club for or a coffee-by-mail club, mail-order coffee club. Besides that, what else keeps you growing in that, like, learning new things? What keeps you from just sort of settling in and like—

Being stagnant.

Yeah, basically.

I have a curious mindset. I like getting in the weeds and I still enjoy doing sourcing and doing research myself, which is a blessing and a curse in a way.

I know what you mean.

I still do that every day. But that really is what lights my fire. Give me a hard problem to solve and some time to think about it. And I want to come up with some creative ways to solve the problem. That really, like, helps to keep me motivated and not to get stagnant. I mean, there's foundational things that I will continue to go back to over and over again. But I just really enjoy taking a challenging problem and trying to solve it.

Good segue into what I wanted to talk about before letting you go here. We have a few minutes left. Is one of those challenges automation? You and I started— you and I were doing automation before it was cool. I mean, before it was even considered. Well, I remember getting criticized for it, and you, you might have too. We're like, you shouldn't do that, you shouldn't automate, you know, it's a, it's a human problem. Yeah, humans automate things all the time. I mean, you know, assembly lines. And anyways, so I digress. Is automation now different than when we started? And if so, what are your philosophies on where you should automate and what you shouldn't, especially now?

Where do you draw the line? Yeah. Yeah. I would say I have a love-hate relationship with automation.

I get it. Totally. No, I understand.

There's, there's a place for it. I mean, people are talking ad nauseam about AI today, and I think a lot of times AI is mislabeled as AI. It's, it's decent automation. It's not artificial intelligence. But I think automation should help you with efficiency in work, and it shouldn't replace critical thinking. And I think unfortunately a lot of people kind of look at automation and AI in this case as a way to kind of speed through decision-making. All of the different, like the GPT tools that are available out there, you gotta fact-check them. I can't tell you how many times I've seen hallucinations And I'm like, well, you're not right in that answer. I mean, the automation tools, the AI tools, they should help you streamline and be more efficient with the work that you're doing, but they shouldn't substitute for good critical thinking and good decision-making skills. But don't let it substitute your own brain for an AI resource.

Right, use them for the, the humdrum repetitive tasks that a machine can do faster, that are, that are, you know, cookie-cutter tasks where there's the consistency is important, you know, for those kind of repetitive and not necessarily thinking tasks, use it there, but then when it involves Thought processes, maybe not so much, right? So don't have it replace your thinking, have it replace your mindless, you know, mealtime reading.

It's a good kickstart, you know, it's a good way, like particularly if you're experiencing writer's block or, you know, something of that sort, it's a good way to kind of kickstart a journey, but it shouldn't be your entire journey. It should help you with, like figuring out, okay, what's the next step I should take here? Does that make sense in what I'm trying to solve here? I'm looking at David's comment there, automate this. That just made me laugh. Yeah, it shouldn't automate all of your decision-making. It should help you kickstart different directions and be a little creative, but don't lose that critical thinking skill.

I think that's a really good answer. Yeah, the question being, where do you draw the line? Basically draw the line at things that are— that can be kind of left unsupervised. If you really need supervision, then that's where you have to start being careful between automation and not. And one of my favorite automations since the beginning of time was the, the whole sequencing concept of it. You have, you know, the first email, and if they don't reply, you have a second email. Long before there were systems that could detect whether or not the person replied, I had a spreadsheet, very basic, that said this person's received the first email. And I knew that when they replied, I would track that they replied. And so if they never replied, they would get the second email. Just a spreadsheet in that it was early automation because they would get sent messages, but I was still pushing the button, right? There would never be like, oops, I sent an email to somebody I didn't mean to because I actually had to hit the send button myself. It was automated, was the template. Sorry, what was that?

Brian Starbuck and I had a— and I, I referenced this a lot, uh, several years ago. He said whether you are digging a hole with a shovel or a backhoe, there is still a human being powering that tool for you. Yeah, you're still pushing the button, like you said.

So push the button. Good, good, good, good. Well, uh, we're getting close on time here, so I want to make sure that, that you get the, uh, the special treat of the two questions that I ask everybody on the show.

Oh, I forgot about that.

You forgot about that?

Oh, I did. Uh-oh.

So the first question is, who should be our next guest? It's okay if they've already been on or if they may not accept. I, I— all I can do is invite them. But who do you think I should invite?

Kenny Han.

Okay.

At ServiceNow.

Perfect. I'll reach out. Thank you. That's awesome. Uh, topic? What made you think of him?

Kenny is a sourcing manager and he was an amazing sourcer and had determined he wanted to grow into a people management role. And he was very, very purposeful in pursuing that for himself.

So awesome.

I think that'd be a really interesting conversation to have with him.

Excellent. And the last question is, uh, for a lot of folks that listen in after the, after the live show, I like to leave them with a provoking thought. So what would you say would be something that they should ask themselves? Like, leave us with a thought-provoking question, not a, not a statement, but something that we should think about.

I'm looking at a poster that I have on my wall that has the Four Agreements listed out on it. Author of the book is from a book called The Four Agreements. Author is Don Miguel Ruiz. And I think this, these, they can be put into question form.

Okay.

Um, the things to live by here. Are you being impeccable with your work?

What's the best one? What's the one that you would say everybody should think about?

Are you doing your best today? And are you remembering that your best looks different every single day and being kind to yourself and thinking about that? Read the whole book, Four Agreements. Awesome book. But always do your best is, is a really good one. And if you ask yourself that question each day and remind yourself that your best is going to look different every day, it's helpful for just being really kind to yourself.

Some days you might only be able to do an inch and that's your best that day. But some days you can do a mile, right?

I like that.

I like that. Pretty cool. Well, thanks a lot for sharing your time with us. I know how busy you are and how valuable your time is, so on behalf of the, the audience members out there, really appreciate that. Thank you so much.

We will— thank you for having me.

Absolutely, my pleasure. My honor to be able to interview you here today. We have Sandra Feldman coming up next week, so please join us then. And until then, be kind to yourselves. Bye, everybody.