Ryan Affolter and Christine Hampton Live on Shally's Alley

Hey everybody, happy Valentine's Day! I'm gonna do that again. Happy Valentine's Day! You are live on Shelly's Alley. It's Friday, February 14th. Yeah, some people say it's a made-up holiday, but you know what, there's actually history to it. There is some history, so it's, it's, it's legit. It may not be a big holiday, however, it's a really good opportunity to tell somebody that you love them and go out and have a nice date. I'm gonna go out to a really nice Greek restaurant with my wife. We have two kids and they're teenagers, and so it's kind of hard for us to get a night out, but one of them is in Maine skiing and the other one has a date of their own. So we get, you know, the house to ourselves, which means, of course, what are we going to do? Leave the house, right? Um, but anyways, Happy Valentine's Day to everybody out there. Remember to tell somebody that you love them. And hat tip to one of our guests, Christine, who said, you know, you should put a little note up that says Happy Valentine's Day. So if it weren't for you, I would not have thought of that. I would probably just mention it, but I wouldn't have the image and all that. So fun stuff. Okay, well, who are these people on your screen? Well, my guests today are from an organization called Rogue Hire. That is not, however, why I invited them. I invited Ryan because we met a couple times. Actually, Christine and I also met, and we were just chatting about, you know, stuff. Ryan's expertise is in the attraction side marketing, and Christine's expertise is in the acquisition side, you know, sourcing. And we were just talking about healthcare, and Rogue Hire specializes in in teaching recruiters how to do healthcare sourcing and recruiting, founded by a company— sorry, founded by Dave Zary. I believe he's the founder, right?

Yep.

Dave and I go way back to— oh my God, I don't even know how long. And so, long story there. So that's how I ended up chatting with Ryan, and one thing led to another, and we're like, you know what, this is, this is worth talking about on Shelly's Alley. So here we are. Healthcare recruiting. Um, I, you know, first of all, say hi, Ryan, Christine.

Hi everybody, I love it. It's a dream to be here. Bucket list.

Absolutely. Awesome. Me too. Oh look, we got Happy Valentine's Day from a user too. Yay! Oh, we got hearts from another one. Nice, thanks Haley. All right. So tell me, just kind of maybe I want to start a little hard here, but that's okay. Everybody, everybody in recruiting says, oh, my jobs are different, my roles are different, my positions are harder. Everybody always, you know, keeps like, oh, mine are harder than yours, whatever. Okay, every job, every rec has its own challenges. Some recs take longer to fill than others, but In healthcare, I seem to hear a lot about we're really, really, really different. What exactly is so different about healthcare? Is it really, really different?

Well, I, I've been a full life cycle recruiter. I've been a sourcer. I've been in leadership. Um, so I feel like I've done the roles and I've been in a lot of different industries— healthcare, biotech, um, insurance, and then just some other generic stuff when I was doing, um, uh, like commission only, you know, headhunting. Yeah, headhunting back in the day. See, I forgot.

Okay, we can say headhunting here.

Headhunting. Yeah. Um, but, um, I, I, I don't know if I'm gonna make some people mad, but I think all jobs are hired. I, I think—

I know that's what I'm saying, all jobs are hired. But, you know, you hear a lot about, um, in, in this industry, you hear a lot about like, oh well, you know, it's, it's, um, a lot more challenging because they're not on their computers, whatever. You can't use LinkedIn, you know, blah, blah, blah.

That's a good point. You got to use your social media a lot more, right? For sure.

Say the same thing for pretty much—

yeah, but I, I, but I feel like it's almost even easier, I think, because we at healthcare, almost everybody needs a license or a certification, and those can be found online, right? Um, so it makes it very good. Nice. You can, you can identify people a little easier. Again, all jobs are card, but it's the process, I think, that is the same. Um, so whether I'm looking for a physician or a nurse or a software developer or whatever, it's kind of like the same process. I do my pre-search, right? I plan my messaging, I plan my keywords, I do my search, I do my engagement. Boom, right? So the process, I think, is the same too.

I mean, a lot of that sounds a lot the same, but the engagement— let me ask you this, because that's—

yeah.

That's probably where I get the most, you know, I'm as a consultant, I go out and I help. You're out there teaching people how to do this. I actually go out there and help build teams, build organizations from a strategic level. And a lot of times when I'm working with these teams, you know, the recruiters and the sourcers will say things like, well, the response rates are really low. And so, you know, everything else you talked about, the pre-search, the campaign, all that makes sense. Um, but then when you prepare for the, for the outreach, do you have to like triple your numbers or what kind of response rates do you get? What would be considered, um, par, you know, for response rates? Not exceptional, not low, but what would be like, you know, you're doing okay if you get what, 30% reply, 40%, 50%? What?

I'm happy if one person responds to a campaign. And I always say that one is good. It's one more than you had 5 minutes ago. So I do think that's a good step. But Ryan, Ryan, Ryan.

One of 100 or one of 1,000? Ryan, what do you think? Yeah.

I mean, oh man, response rates are gonna vary across, you know, the multiple different challenges you're, and campaigns and modes of communication you're using. To your original question, I just want to touch on some things I think are kind of unique about healthcare, right? And I think the biggest thing when I'm talking to TA leaders dealing with these challenges, the biggest thing that sticks out to me is kind of the burnout and retention. Healthcare is super high stress from their environments to dealing with long hours, emotional demands. So that burnout leads to high turnover rates, which also equal retention challenges. And then you mix in kind of the cultures and values and how to differentiate from each other. So that's another challenge in healthcare from like a sourcing to an employer brand to recruitment marketing point of view is healthcare systems all have similar values, goals, and objectives, right? It's all about delivering high-quality care. It's all about empathy. It's all about patient satisfaction. So all these hospital systems are solving similar problems. But how do you sound different? How do you differentiate yourself? How do you speak about your opportunities in a way that candidates view you as, as different, right? How do you create that differentiation by being specific, attractive, different? Authentic.

Okay, so I get that. That's— so what I'm hearing is this, and pardon me, but for the folks that know my show, I love to synthesize and bring, you know, bring things together. That's kind of my, my thing anyway, or at least I like to pretend that it is. What I'm hearing you say is the help with response rates, but what's really different is that each of these, like, say for example hospital systems, um, each clinic has a different culture, different environment, different settings. So even though you work for big corp, you know, healthcare, every one of those, you know, areas, you have to have different marketing style, different messaging, your communications need to be specialized because it's very nuanced. So what I'm hearing is it's harder for that reason. Even though you didn't answer my response rates question, you did sort of answer that why is it harder. But, um, yeah, I think I got that correctly. What is the response rate though?

Yeah. Uh, so, okay, if you look at maybe 100 people, you send out maybe 100 messages. But the thing is, I just want to say this, that sourcing, um, what we try to teach within the Recruiter Academy, which is owned by Rogue Hire, is one-on-one personalized concierge messaging. So whereas recruitment marketing, you know, might be doing more mass emailing, in, in sourcing, it's you know, it's really a one-to-one. But to make it easier, let's just say you send out 10 messages. You're doing really great if 3 or 4 respond and say anything, whether they're not interested or they are interested.

Or not now, no thank you.

Because we really love no thank yous. We love no thank yous.

And of course, the more you personalize, the more you target. I mean, there's— I teach this to clients as well, that the highly, more highly targeted you have— geography, job title, level— your response rates are going to go higher and personalization and all that. I was just curious as to, you know, is it really that much less response, right? Because in some industries, 30 to 40% is really good. And in some industries, it's not really good. So it sounds like the difficulty really is in the nuance of communicating the culture and this organization's unique environment. And that's not the big, you know, with corporations like at Google, you have a company culture, but with, you know, what you guys are working with in your industry. Each hospital, even though they're all part of like Baptist Healthcare, each one has its own culture, its own specializations, its own reasons why someone might want to go there, if it's a magnet or if it's, uh, you know, research or whatever. So, okay, so it is harder for real. And, um, oh, Brian, you gotta, you gotta heads up on the, uh, dog making the cameo. Yeah, that's right. So it is harder. Okay, cool, cool, cool. I appreciate that. I know, I know it was kind of putting you on the spot there. Um, I know it was a hard question, but you didn't think it was going to be easy coming here, right?

No, that wouldn't have been no fun at all.

Okay, so now let's go back to everything, right? Um, recruiting is, is full of myths. And a lot of that is just freaking BS. Let's just call it what it is. You know, everybody has to have their own spin on it, whatever. There's a lot of myths. Um, which industry best practice— I'm using air quotes for those of you that are listening— best practice. By the way, uh, funny side note. So I was at this gigantic conference once. I was in the audience and I think it was like 1,000 people in the audience. And there was a panel on stage. And I didn't know anybody on the panel. The panel member, the runner, whatever, you know, the person that's like the moderator, the panel moderator, asked the panel a question. And the question was, what is the definition of best practice? Right? And I was expecting somebody on the panel to answer that, but they all were like stumped, like, huh. Um, so I just, I mean, I was like, come on, that's a softball question, right? I'm in the, I'm in the back and I just yell out, totally rude, but it was nothing was, it was like literally dead silence. So I'm being totally rude. I yell out, a best practice is a collection of mistakes other people made when they arrived at what works for them.

Yeah, that's good.

And everybody was like, oh, that's That's harsh, but that's so true. So even though I'm using best practice, you and I know, especially after what you just said, every clinic, every hospital is going to have a different best practice. But there are some things that people talk about in our industry that are like the standard or whatever. So what, what standard best practice makes your eyes roll to the back of your head?

Um, well, the first thing that really just grinds my gears is people who think sourcing is fast, right? Oh, we, we don't have anybody on this. Put sourcing on it. They'll— and we're not fast. Sourcing's laborious. But I look at, like, you look, talk to an executive and they're like, hey, my, my recruiters are filling 15 jobs a month and sourcers are only filling 4, so why don't I just hire more recruiters? Shouldn't that just take care of my problem? Right? I— that kind of grinds my gears too, because they don't understand the sourcing, um, that takes time, investment, and has a long-term payoff. It's rarely fast. So that's probably the thing that irks me the most.

And I couldn't— Tawfiq, thank you for that question. I couldn't have softballed that any better. Literally, you just got the answer right there. I mean, that, that is the answer. Christine said the question is, um, evidence points to a 13 million nurse shortfall by 2030, assuming in the United States. Curious to hear your thoughts. And honestly, I think the best answer is what Christine just said, which basically is sourcing, right? Recruiting is, is only part of the problem, not, not the solution. I mean, a problem sourcing is the other part. So when you have a shortfall, you can't count on people coming to you, right? When, when it's the opposite, when you have lots of candidates and few jobs, then you can just sit back and, you know, let your inbox do the work. But when there's fewer candidates and more jobs, you got to go out and you can't wait for them to come to you. So that's literally sourcing. And going out and finding people is never going to be faster than posting an ad and having 2,000 people apply instantly.

Yeah, yeah, that's, um, I, I think, um, we have to just educate and educate and educate because people even in talent acquisition don't understand what sourcing is to, don't understand the investment that you you can work when you first start sourcing. Let's say your organization that you're just starting up a sourcing team, that you'll probably be— it'll probably be 90 to 120 days before you start seeing your first hires rolling in. To ask a company to make a 4-month investment and see nothing from it, that's a hard thing to swallow. But the results come, and the results, um, uh, you know, are— keep rolling in after that.

There's a long tail. Yeah.

And this is a consumer-driven market, and if you don't connect with people like consumers and you wait for them to apply, you are behind the 8-ball. You need sourcing. It's a secret weapon.

Yeah. Ryan, you, you were quietly raising your hand over there.

Yeah, I wanted to piggyback on that. I think one of the common misconceptions is that there are strategies that are easy one-click of the button in recruitment marketing that can find candidates where candidates are, where they're living, breathing on a daily basis, things like programmatic job advertising. And the truth is, while I'm not, you know, bashing these tools at all, they're still very actively in tuned and created to find the active job seeker on job boards, aggregators, you know, social sites. So the reality is without a multi-channel approach that is very deeply rooted in sourcing, right, Christine, but also other best practices like, uh, having a candidate rediscovery program and mining your existing database, looking at boomerangs, looking at your alumni, having other types of advocacy and ambassadorships and culture of care types of programs and diversifying your marketing strategy beyond just the job boards and aggregators, you're not going to find candidates, you know, where, where they are.

So you have to adapt, you know, some of them. Basically, bottom line is, you know, what I'm hearing here is bottom line is if you, if you just sit back and expect them to come, that may work for, for sometimes it may not work. Other times it may work for some people. It may work, you know, you may fill some jobs, but to do your job, you're going to have to A, go out and find them and B, approach them the right way. And in order to do that, you need the content. So it's a two-pronged, you know, you can't have one without the other. In other words, if you just post a bunch of crappy jobs, you're not going to get the right candidates to apply anyway. So you do have to have good content. You do have to have good branding. So I'm hearing kind of, you know, one's dependent on the other and it's a symbiotic relationship, which by the way, is what I've always maintained is that sourcing is a specialization within recruiting. And here we have a living example. Both of you are highly specialized in an area. Christine is highly specialized in the identification, and Ryan is highly specialized, in fact, has a long history of experience outside of recruiting in digital marketing, digital media. So, his specialization is the attraction side. And this is why both of you have to be, you know, on this because it's both sides.

So, we're a good work marriage.

Yeah, but I think it's a really good example for other people that, you know, you can't just say sourcing will solve the problem. Or Christine, as you just said, you can't say let's just hire more recruiters. Sure, you can hire all the recruiters or all the sourcers. Either way, if you have bad messaging, bad outreach, bad targeting, it's not going to work, right? So I think that's a solid, solid answer. Thank you for that.

For me, it's not saying that, you know, programmatic job advertising or Indeed is a necessary evil. We're just coaching, uh, to, to not be over-reliant, right?

And, and have a diversified portfolio that includes one of the tools in your toolkit, but it better be a sharp tool.

And lean into those unique things that, uh, are more consumer-driven approaches that we learn from, right? I know, Christine, you're coaching, uh, sourcing teams how to leverage tools like Reddit and Quora and industry associations and these other kind of hidden gem resources and communities where to find talent where they're at.

Ryan, I want you to answer the question too, because so we heard Christine's answer, but what is in your eyes the best practice that makes your eyes roll back the hardest? In your side, in the, you know, attraction side? So one thing, I mean, I think I touched on a little bit.

It's for me, again, it's kind of that over-specific tools, uh, you know, in addition to maybe putting too much of your eggs in one basket. Maybe you're over-investing in LinkedIn, maybe you're over-investing in Indeed, uh, you know, diversify.

You're putting all your eggs in that basket.

And lean into some of the, the emerging technologies, especially that are, are driven by AI. So think of your AI sourcing tools, uh, think about—

what is that emerging technology? Referral automation.

On the AI sourcing side, there's a lot that we lean into, I think.

But I like that referral automation. Referral— tell me more about referral automation.

Pearl automation, uh, that's leveraging tools that can sync directly with your existing database. So think your— think of your ATS, think of your CRM, and resurface those best-fit candidates by using ranking scoring algorithms right into your sourcing. So while you're sourcing outbound, you also get delivered, uh, candidates that have previously applied. I think the benchmark from our last year's study of how long a candidate has typically sat in your database is something astronomical, like 492 days since the time they originally created a profile.

That's nothing. Right.

But the story is, you know, as part of your strategy, you should have processes and strategies in place to resurface that, that hidden talent and have practices in place to continually, uh, find your own data, basically find the candidates that you already have, basically. Yeah, yeah, the nurturment, the, the re-engagement, keeping that relationship, I think is, is huge.

So yeah, I'm glad we, we, uh, clarified that because I was thinking you were, you were talking about employee referrals. So that's another, um, employee referrals too is also is also huge. Automation for employee referrals. Yeah, I was wondering if, if that's where you were gonna go. Um, but, um, but yeah, I'm glad you clarified that. Um, you know, recruiting tech vendors— we talked about this in the last meeting, and since you guys are out there in the— and, you know, what's, what's cool about talking to people like you on the show is that You know, sometimes my guests are leaders that have been working inside of a corporation. And for the last 3, 4, or 5 years, you know, their focus is how to hire for this company. But you guys have this broader experience where you're like, how to hire for— sure, it's healthcare, but it's like multiple companies. So I'm sure you get to see a lot of what vendors promise, but I want to get real. What is What is one of those vendor promises? You don't have to drop a name because I don't want to offend anybody, but what are one of those promises that vendors make that is like literally overhyped, overpriced, and downright just useless that you've encountered? You're like, come on, you're selling me that still? It doesn't deliver, right? So what— again, I don't, I don't, I don't mean a company or a brand. I mean, what is one of the promises that they make that just always just falls short.

Ryan is the expert on the vendors, but I do have one that I'll squeeze in here. I'm waiting for the day where CRM vendors understand that sourcers use it, the system, not just recruitment marketers, and that I don't— I care about open rates and, and click rates. But could I please just have a candidate reach out, sourcer submit, that kind of thing? That's, that's what I can't stand.

That is so awesome. That is like spot on. Oh my, if I had a dollar for every CRM that has been focused on marketing. No offense, Ryan, but like, we get it, we get it. It's, it's all about them. I get it, but where's the sourcing side? These CRMs never get that. I've always had to like hack my way through. I feel like a, you know, a, uh, an explorer hacking my way through the thick forest in the CRM system to trying to figure out how to make it work for sourcing because it's, it's not— you don't just send out 10,000 emails, folks, right? Oh my God, that is so freaking hilarious. Thank you for that. Um, all right, so yeah, I mean, best answer ever. I think we, you know, we, we could probably just end here, but Ryan, what is the promise that a vendor makes that we should bury in an unmarked grave and forget about forever?

So for me, I'm not sure if I can nail it down to one promise, but the biggest point of frustration for me, I would say, leans into ambiguity. So especially in this age where, you know, AI is emerging in, in everything from the initial screening process to, you know, outbound sourcing to, to scheduling to candidate matching It's kind of everywhere. And there's a lot of development within the industry, right? Point solutions are creating more solutions. They're becoming multipurpose tools. They're integrating with other talent intelligence tools. They're starting to get gobbled up by CRMs and other talent platforms. It's just this evolving space and it's really tough to, to keep up with that. And I think Often the gap is more lack of transparency in exactly what they do and how they solve problems. And when you approach them, being transparent and honest about what they can or can't do, I think they're very quick to be like, yep, I can check 2 or 3 of these boxes and I'm going to fake the rest and kind of take you down a rabbit hole, which can be frustrating for talent acquisition leaders that may be working with a specific CRM or have specific goals and objectives that they need to meet, right? They have a checklist for a reason.

Yeah. So, yeah, again, what I'm hearing is the practice of, geez, I want to say overpromising. So, I mean, it's not any one thing as much as just a way of marketing their stuff where these vendors tell you, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, we can do this, this, this, and this, but then they don't really tell you how or like they can do it, but only if you buy an add-on, or they can do it, but only if you spend a ton of money on consulting to customize, or they can do it, but it's really not that great, right? So yeah, I gotcha. All right, I hear you, uh, folks. You can connect with Ryan over indulgence and— go ahead.

Oh, I was gonna say that the last piece was kind of the, the over indulgence of buzzwords. We see AI, machine learning, and things everywhere. And yeah, sometimes there's elements of it, sometimes it's not, but it can be kind of nauseating. To your point, Shelly, I wish they would be more under the hood. Let's show us how these things work and how they solve problems versus kind of trying to create this mystique. And hype.

Speaking of buzzword bingo, um, there's, you know, they'll throw out like candidate experience, and this isn't just vendors now, I'm going back to everybody, right? We got candidate experience, we got diversity and inclusion, we got AI-powered, we got, you know, but, and every year is a different flavor. I've gone to a lot of these, and you remember we talked about this for HR Tech where we're like Man, it just seems like everybody here just crossed off the last thing on their bullet list and put 'now powered by AI' like on the same product, right? But what is it from, from both of you, what, what is the gap between what companies, vendors, companies, employers, what they say and what they actually do? So what is the most overhyped concept that recruiters pretend to care about but just fail to execute? And if you can't name names, just a pattern right now. Not just the vendor, but like, you know, what is the one— what is one thing that you can think of that we're always like, yeah, yeah, we do that, but really we don't?

Ah, pipelining.

Oh my God, you need to come back to my show. I'm having you back again. Man, yeah, pipeline. They say they're pipelining, but really it's just a list.

Yeah, it's just a list. I got a list here of people on the ready, right? And true pipelining is when a candidate tells you no, that you log it, you schedule your next connection with them, and you follow up on that, and you stay in touch with them with research or company information or just whatever. That's how you're kind of piping lining so that when they are ready, when that day they walk into their job and they're like, well, screw this, 'Where's Christine's email? She's been, you know, hunting me down for months now. She's my friend now,' right? And that they connect. So the act of pipelining is— takes— requires action. It's more than just people sitting in a database.

Yeah, in fact, I would say the contacting part, it's— you're right. A lot of folks miss out on, 'Sure, I'll be interested in 6 months,' and then they don't put something on their, you know, reminder or whatever and reach back out. Or put it— at least put them on a list to be contacted later and actually do it. But I think there's another part of it too, which is continuing to engage in between. So like, you can, you know, they can say, hey, ping me back in 6 months, but there's nothing wrong with, you know, in, in a month or two sending them a quick follow-up. Hey, um, just wanted to, you know, that we did this and, you know, this is going on in the industry, whatever. Just information and keep them, you know, people talk about keeping warm. So pipelining is the one that people give lip service to, but keep them warm.

I love you when you just said keep them warm. So that goes right with it. What is keeping warm? You better be keeping them warm, right? And by the way, nobody really stays warm. You got them or you don't, right?

Later you ping them and they're like, who the hell are you?

Keep it warm.

Yep. Oh man.

So the one that I have, Shelley, is— and maybe it's a, uh, you know, political boulders within, you know, TA organizations. But I think I get asked a lot, what are simple ways to create efficiency? What are simple ways to use technology to make our lives and our jobs easier? And there's some real fast, easy—

like what?

Easy way. It's like the idea of an AI note-taker, which recruiters' sourcers' action on that and a lot of hesitancy to kind of get out of their own way. And again, maybe Christine, you have an opinion on that. It might just be boulders set in place by the organizations themselves. I wish I saw more, more energy and more excitement into adopting new, new tools and technologies that are out there.

Yeah, that's a good point. I think sourcing is usually where that gets done a lot of times because they have the, you know, especially if they're not tied to a specific rec and have, you know, are tied to making hires, but it's part of their job, at least with my teams when I've built them. And when I advise companies, I say, you know, part of the sourcer's job is to go out there and, you know, spend 10% of their time trying new things, like you said, uh, and experimenting, because discovering an opportunity is how you're going to get an edge. If you just keep doing the same old, same old, you know, you're not going to get anything new. But, um, I do want to comment on, um, the, the note-taking— you mentioned note-taking apps, and I, I know there's— that there are, um, a lot of options out there for note-taking apps. However, it's coming from privacy and compliance and other issues that I've had to deal with regarding note-taking apps. They aren't safe yet. There's a way to make them safe, but they really aren't. There's too many opportunities for something that is on the record to be used the wrong way to the detriment of either party or both parties. So it's similar to recording calls, right? You know, there are places where you can have single-party recording. In other words, I can just record the call and not tell you. And there are other states and, you know, regulations where that's not allowed. But either way, whether it's legal or not legal, The moment that you have that recording, it now becomes, uh, something that could be used as evidence.

Discoverable. Yeah.

Yeah. And there's exactly, there's discovery. So sometimes, you know, people say things by mistake. Yeah. And I'm talking about like an interviewer leaking some kind of, you know, secret formula accidentally. Now, if nobody wrote it down, then That's okay, so I heard it and I can forget it, but it's written down and it goes in a database somewhere. Or there's just too many errors. So I think there's a very real reason why people hesitate with note-taking apps, not just the legality of it. In some states, it would actually be straight up illegal unless you literally disclose that. But even where it's legal, there's some legal entanglements. However, there's other, and there's an ethical way to do it, right? There's other technology out there though that I agree with you is it's like we're able to use it, but why are we not using it? You know, we're able to use it, but why are we not? What is the holdback? I don't have the answer to that. I run into it a lot. I'll just give you an example. Calendaring. Okay. That's a, you would think a very basic system. It's been, I mean, Outlook and the whole office environment has had the ability to delegate calendars and have other people help you with calendars since long before AI. But now with AI, uh, and I'm using air quotes again, um, because it's really not intelligent, it's literally just a taskmaster. It's so much easier. You don't even need a fully dedicated person to do your calendaring. It's so much easier to share a link. And even to have a bot. A lot of these chatbots have the ability to find time on your calendar based on rules and stuff like that. And that's one that doesn't really have— I mean, there's very little risk there because you can expose only a certain part of your calendar. For example, on my Google Calendar, I can choose I only want Mondays and Tuesdays from this time to this time. Nobody can see my calendar. It only shows availability if I'm available, and I still have to accept the invite. So there's But it, but it's so much easier for me to send the link than it is to be like, well, I'm available this day and this day, and then they don't get it until the next day. They're like, oh, sorry, that day's already in the past. And, you know, back and forth. So let me ask you that. Why don't we— why don't organizations use more of that really basic stuff that really has very little risk? Why? What's the roadblock?

I, I could say that about 1,000 tools. If I could count on my hand the number of times I've given technology to a a team or a group and has a low adoptability. And I, I think we could probably— this is a whole other conversation, probably, but there's a lot of change management in there. And people get it, get into their ways of doing things, and they don't like to make it different, right? So there's a whole psychology behind it. But from the candidate side, man, just when someone sends me a Calendly to do anything— I don't care if it's a doctor appointment or the guy who's fixing my radiators, you know, or whatever— send me a Calendly, And I can get— you're getting your tires done that way now. Just kind of click on a link and get brand new tires. Ah, chef's kiss! But they forget. Yeah, I think we sometimes forget, you know, the change management part in there. And to make it a little bit easier for our recruiters and sourcers to understand, we shove things on them without prepping them, preparing them, and doing the things that we need to. I mean, I know it's some soft handholding, but they deserve it. They deserve to know what's the change, Why are we changing it? Give it a little pilot example. Grab some ambassadors who can champion it. And, and sometimes we choose technology that doesn't fit. We didn't ask the recruiters and sourcers first if this was going to be useful. Right? Now, and, and when we do, we let them have a say.

Now you have to use it. Here you go. And we're going to measure you if you don't use it.

Let them be on the part of choose, helping to choose vendors, right? I think that that is some of the mistakes that we've made on, on leadership side. Um, every once in a while.

That's a really good point. So it's, um, it's about, you know, we're giving them more stuff to do and not taking other things away, or we're giving them something that they have to use even though they don't really understand why, or maybe don't even want to use it, or didn't have a choice in using it. So that's a good point. Yeah. Um, because what you— you know what, I, I just, I just thought of something you can kind of use even if your company doesn't have a, you know, like a standardized system, or your ATS doesn't have that, you can still use Calendly for your own calendar. So you're right, it may not be rolled out to the entire organization, but as a recruiter, an individual recruiter, you could— and probably a lot of folks do— just use it for their own personal calendar, and then they synchronize with their work calendar so that, you know, it makes things easier. Um, Good point. Let's switch to hiring managers. If you could— magic wand— if you could wave your magic wand and force every hiring manager in the Western Hemisphere to unlearn one bad habit, what would it be? Discuss amongst yourselves.

Um, I would make them, uh, take one of the, uh, You know the lady, the Marie Kondo, who says, "Does this bring you joy?" Right? "If not, throw it away." I wish they could all take a class like that to just look at a resume and say, "Does this bring me joy?" Yes? Schedule the interview right then and there. If not, move on. So I think they, the hiring managers need to know that this is a game of hours and not days.

OK. Okay, all right, uh, that, that's, uh, that's a little, that's a little harsh, but I like it. Hours and not days. So you're basically saying the hiring manager needs to, within hours, take a look at your resume, make a decision right away?

Yeah, our whole occupation is talking about ghosting. Ghosting to me is a trigger that you don't understand the market. Because ghosting means you took too long to get back to them. You know, I know that it, I guess it is harsh, right? But a lot of our resources and recruiters know we got to move faster. But we have failed them in educating them on the market right now. And we have to do a better job of educating the hiring managers. Let me know, this is a passive candidate. That means by the time they wake up tomorrow, they might have changed their mind. If you're interested, we should really connect with them today. This is a hot product, right? So that, that's it. And it's not all the hiring manager's fault. They don't know our world. We have to educate them.

You hit a nerve. We got a bunch of, we got a bunch of comments on it. Like, definitely hit a nerve. Awesome. That's really cool.

I think I would like hiring managers to kind of follow our lead in taking more of a candidate-centric mindset, right? So flip the script from that employer-centric perspective, how we speak to a candidate-centric, you know, why us, why now, and kind of embrace that what's in it for me storytelling. I think often hiring managers don't realize that from the candidate's perspective, we're often commodities, and that they have choices, right? And it's all about differentiation and our unique selling points.

Okay, thinking about that. All right. One thing I like to— I don't know if this is something that is common place or not. I always, I always tell customers to do this. But it's to get something from— it's big— picking up, piggybacking off your point there, get something from the hiring manager about the hiring manager. In other words, you know, we're all— we're always used to talking about the company, the brand, the employment brand, the EVP. Whether you do it or not, it's definitely talked about. But I like to go one step further and ask the hiring manager what their EVP is. In other words, you, you as a boss, you as a leader of people, what is your selling point that I can— so that way when I'm talking, it's more about when I talk to candidates, because I don't usually put that in the marketing. But when I talk to candidates and I teach recruiters how to talk to candidates, they are able to highlight or express something positive about the person they're going to be working with. Because that's, that in my opinion matters more than the employment brand, which may or may not even apply to this department, especially as you were saying, some of these organizations that have multiple cultures across the board. So, I always like to ask the hiring manager, what is your selling? What is your pitch? What are you good at? Are you good at managing? Are you a good hands-off manager? Are you good at teaching leadership? Are you good at Are you an expert in the field? Like, what is your selling point?

I love that. If I would have had to pick a quick No. 2 on that, I think that's a really important part because we don't just quit jobs, right, for bad leaders; we quit jobs for, for, because we want a different hiring manager, right? You hear it all the time. And, and people want to belong, especially the younger generation. They will take 50 cents less an hour for an organization that's going to make them feel like they are part of something and that they have aligned ideas and ideals. So I do think it's really important that we get from the manager. In sourcing, we do something called a QIAW. It's a candidate qualified, interested, available, and what matters most. That's our screening.

So why not— I thought the W was for winning.

And winning. But why not ask the hiring manager? Listen, what, you know, don't tell me I'm a good, great communicator. And I really like to— I'm a people person. Right? Give me something that matters. Give me something of substance, because the candidates want to hear it. And it also is helpful in a preclose. But we have to provide managers is data. One of the things Rogue Hire does is provide a whole lot of data to our clients so we can show them maybe from start, from the time we start talking to a candidate passively till they apply, right, or till they, till they're submitted, all this time that it takes. And if they can start seeing some data here on the effort that it's taking, then they can start have the understanding on their side, OK, based upon who's available, there's only 17 of these candidates in the marketplace. I'm going to try to talk to all 17. But if all 17 decline me, What, what's our, what's our round 2? What are we going to try next? And getting those pieces of information to help people in healthcare, it's always a lateral move. You want an RN here, guess what? They're an RN there. You want a lab tech here, guess what? They're a lab tech there. And you're not going to get candidates to switch jobs without what you had just mentioned there, without the, um, you're going to switch jobs because this manager is better, period.

Yeah. Brian, um, let me ask you this, is you kind of turning this back to the marketing side. Um, if we have— Christine and I have been able to obtain a pitch from the hiring manager, you know, let's— I'm just gonna make one up. Let's say that they're, they're a certified luminary, you know, in this industry. They know more about this industry than most people have forgotten in their lifetimes or whatever, but you know what I mean. So like, that's their selling point. So this hiring manager is like real, real expert. We can talk about that when we're talking to the candidate. But how do you put, how would you recommend, or would you even recommend putting that in the marketing, in the outreach, in the job posting, in the career site? Where else besides on the live conversation can that, should that go?

There's a lot of opportunities to start. We call kind of the position-driven EVP, right? Which is, which is a layer, layer deeper than company-driven EVP. What I think is really interesting and would love to get some more data around is companies that are starting to embed that hiring manager story into the job posting itself, right? So think of companies like Sparkstart that can embed a video that is created directly from the hiring manager when that requisition is created, where they get the opportunity for 30 seconds, 60 seconds to tell their quick story. Now, let's, you know, not forget there's likely a lot of challenges to getting that adopted within the organization, right? Where we're putting ourselves out there transparently using video. But I think the concept is really interesting and it creates that immediate kind of connection, that human-to-human, that rapport core, that, that trust that you're seeing the hiring manager kind of be authentic and tell their story that, you know, doesn't come scripted from their, their EVP, right? They're not reading off their company values. They're telling you exactly, you know, who I am, what it's like to work for me, and why that's important. So I, I love the idea.

So you put it in a video is what you're saying.

That's, that's one, that's one thing.

Okay.

You know, within the job posting itself, you can create a why us, why now, or what's in it for me section. I know often job descriptions are off limits, but if you're able to at least put in like a header with, with some of your own personal narratives, I think that's huge. I think creating your own personal brand on LinkedIn as a hiring manager, as a recruiter is uber important too, because you're not just selling the company's story, right? The opportunity. You're selling yourself as the person that's going to be their concierge, that's going to lead them down this path to, you know, a life-changing opportunity. So I think there's, there's lots of ways we can do to tell that story.

Would you put it in writing in an email message somehow?

Highlighting kind of your, your differentiators, or like, you know, what's, what's kind of the opportunity and why you yourself as a hiring manager are—

Yeah, I mean, is it too, is it too into— because I mean, you know, a job posting is about a particular opening, and so it makes sense that that manager for that opening, but if you go like a level higher on the department or the, you know, it's no longer about the job posting, so how would you How would you market that manager's, uh, EVP, um, when it's, when it's not that manager's job, or should you even, you know, is it just, is this really down to the tactical job level or is there a way to sort of make this a bigger, I think the video is probably the best idea.

It would be in my cadence too, for me to, if I did a, let's say I'm doing a typical cadence is like a 6-6-3 and that's 4 connection points. Within 6 days apart, 6 days apart, 3 days apart. OK. So if I do a typical cadence, my first connection might just be a little bit about the company, maybe highlights about the job. And my second cadence might be about manager or research or something. Maybe my third cadence there that goes out might just be that a video from the hiring manager, you know, saying, "I invite you to apply to this job." You know, Christine told me she's interested in doing— Yeah, right, right. So that, as part of the string of the cadence, I think so.

I love that. I was gonna say, as an initial cold outreach, it might be a little presumptuous, but as building that as part of your cadence, I think it's definitely about the story, right?

I like that. Yeah. Let— tell me a little bit about the benchmark. I'm gonna put this up here for folks. This is a Rogue Hair has been doing a benchmark study for 16 years. I think this is the 16th year. And it is a benchmark to compare how your team performs against peers and, you know, other similar companies. So it's free to participate. And then, of course, I assume if you participate, you get the, you get the results. So, you know, metrics, predictive indicators. Tell us a little bit about that. Again, this is free. I'm just putting it up there. To help folks in the healthcare. And if you're in healthcare, you should probably participate in this. But tell us why.

Yeah. Oh, Ryan, if you'll let me talk sourcing, then I'll get, you know, toss it to you for the, the rest of it maybe then. But I know just from the sourcing benchmark side, there are recruitment marketing— I'm sorry, recruiting benchmarks. Ryan is working on recruitment marketing benchmarks, but there are recruiting benchmarks specifically for sourcing. I always say, you know, we all say it, right? What doesn't get measured doesn't get changed. It doesn't get done, right? And we're probably one of the, uh, very few other than Shelly created your little funnel many, many years ago, Shelly. But sourcing, our benchmarks measure 6 to 7 areas. And from that, we'll get a lot of ratios and percentages that'll tell us whether or not we're being successful in the row. I can tell you today how much, how many offers a sourcer is getting a month. I know how many offers they get because I know how many offers need to be extended. I know how many offers need to be extended because I know how many hiring manager interviews they need. And from that, I know how many hiring managers interviews they need because I know how many should be submitted. And I know how many should be screened. And I know how to be— how to reach out to.

So this is about other organizations, whether— yeah, gotcha.

It is mathematical based upon all of our clients, nation to nation, California to Maine, all different types of hospital systems, rehab centers, children's care, medical academia, for-profit, nonprofit. What are they doing? And from there, we have our data scientists creating the averages. Yeah, Ryan?

Yeah, so like our last year's study, we're talking 147 purchases participating organizations. So across that thousands of hospitals, over 6,000 data points were published last year. So roughly 9.8 million applications and 740,000 positions filled. So that's our larger healthcare TA study, but kind of same concept. If you don't understand where you're at comparative to the industry, you're, you're kind of at a disadvantage or you're not able to identify identify what your lagging indicators are, what your problems are, what your pain points are, and able to identify opportunities for, for change. So even, for example, let's take time to fill as a leading metric. A lot of organizations are able to easily measure time to fill. So what, right? But there's, you know, dozens upon dozens of steps in between time to fill that we need to identify to, to know where our lagging points are. You know, maybe it's with our hiring managers, maybe it's a certain point of the process, maybe it's not enough candidates at the top of the funnel. We're not getting enough applicant flow. So this benchmark study helps you kind of understand where your average Yeah, where you're, where you're, you know, blowing it and where you're kind of elite. And all participants get a customized scorecard, so showing their metrics bumped up against the rest of the studies.

So you get the metrics and you get yours compared to that. Okay, guys, we are— I really appreciate you joining us today. We're running short on time here, and I always have to ask this question. Of all my guests. Everybody gets the same treatment. Um, and there's actually— there's two. The first one of those is, who should be our next guest?

I, I think you need to have David Zarian.

Would he even want to come?

We, we'd have— we'd have to pay him in, in, in, um, in, uh, I don't know. He doesn't eat— he doesn't eat cookies. He— yeah. Puppies? Yeah, I don't even know if he likes puppies. Yeah, something. You have to pay him in self-help books. He loves reading. So, we pay him in books. Give a Barnes Noble gift card. But David, as our founder, really sets the tone for everything that we believe in, in Rogue Hire. And he's brilliant. And he's just fun to listen to.

Hey, I know the guy. So, you're not— you're pushing against the open door here. So, yeah, awesome. All right. Bend his ear and let him know that an invitation will be coming forth. Um, awesome. So, uh, you don't have to each give me a person, but right, if you have another person you want to add—

yeah, yeah, I'll add one because we kind of scratched the surface on this and then moved on. But talking about, uh, employee referral automation, I believe he's, he's actually live with us today, but I'll nominate Tawfiq Abu Khajil, uh, CEO of Echo, the referral automation solution. He's got fantastic benchmarks.

Yeah, he actually did comment a few times here in the chat, so I know exactly how to find him. Awesome, uh, thank you for that. All right, and our closing question is— and you guys can, uh, you know, put your heads together and answer this one jointly unless you want to have two separate answers. I like to end with kind of a tough question. If recruiting were a video game, what's the cheat code that people don't know but should use?

I defer to Ryan. I'm sorry, I don't play video games.

A cheat code is like, you know, the, the one thing that lets you kind of, you know, it's like it ensures that you can win the game because it gives you all the superpowers in the, in the, in the game.

Data, data is the final boss.

Data is— okay, there you go.

I know that.

Ryan is the boss. Awesome.

For me, I think there's lots of principles out there, but, uh, management by daily improvement.

Oh, okay.

I'm gonna say is one kind of leaning into the Kaizen idea of getting 1% better each day.

Okay. All right. So, well, 1%. Hold on a second. Wait, whoa, whoa, back up. There's, there's, uh, how many workdays in a year? 260 or something like that. So you're saying every year we gotta get 260% better? Damn, man. That's harsh. Gosh, if you get 1% better every day, that means you're improving by 200% a year. Um, gosh, give me something I can achieve. How about 1% a week? I'll take that. I'm just thinking about going to the gym and like increasing my weight by 1% every visit. Uh, I'll be, I'll be lifting, uh, you know, Earth pretty soon. Um, but I get it. So basically what you're saying is, you know, give yourself these micro goals. And, and seek to increase them in, in easily, easily attainable chunks. Because when you look at 1% over a year daily, that's just overwhelming. But, um, I like that. That's cool. That's cool.

Well, thank you, Shelly.

Thank you, Shelly. All right, a pleasure.

Thanks. Yeah, thanks to both of you for, for joining us. I really appreciate your time here. And to everyone out there, if you are still willing to come back next week, we have Jeff Hunter from Talentism. Jeff is— he doesn't know this yet, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna call him out on the show, um, and he probably isn't gonna watch this episode. He is the reason I have the show, believe it or not. So, uh, kind of a big deal. I mean, not directly, but in, in a, in a very traceable indirect way. So come back. He is, uh, he has a company that is an HR consulting firm called Talentism. Look him up. He will be on next week if everything goes well. Until then, be kind to yourselves. Bye everybody. Happy Valentine's Day.

Valentine's Day.