Scaling Smarter with Julia Arpag Live on Shally's Alley

Hey, hey, hey, how's everybody doing? You are live on Shelly's Alley, a little bit late, but that's okay. Better late than never. Um, sometimes we just have technical issues and we'd rather just be happy and on camera for you than, than try to, you know, start on time and rush. So here we are. Today I have an unusual situation. Um, I am meeting a complete stranger for the first time. Normally, uh, my guests are people that I've met, or, um, you know, even if it's not face to face, we've had, you know, virtual meetings and whatever. This is the first time that I am talking to Julia— am I saying Arpag or Arpak?

It's Arpag.

Arpag. Julia Arpag, who is a CEO of a startup search firm search firm, is that right? I don't know what to call it, search partner, etc. Anyway, um, so really happy. I, I've been reading her LinkedIn posts and kind of following her a little bit, stalking her a little bit, and, uh, I thought, you know, this would be a really good guest. So I invited her, and of course she accepted, and so she's here. And, uh, we just met, but I have a ton of questions. Say hi, Julia.

Hi, it's so good to meet everyone, and I can already tell we're going to be good friends, Shelly. I'm not even concerned about it being our first meeting.

Awesome. All right. I love the halo that you have.

Isn't it fun? Yeah, with the light behind me.

Yeah. No, no, go back. Hide the light. Hide the light. You have like a halo that's like, you know, an anime. So awesome. I want one of those like for myself.

You need one.

You do. I can do like stuff like this, you know, that's kind of fun.

There you go. That is really fun.

That's the, uh, I think this is the Apple that does this. I'm not really sure.

Oh, there you go.

That's awesome. Um, it's kind of cool, the 3D effect. But anyways, so man, you, uh, First of all, you're all over LinkedIn, um, which is a hard thing to do, and you've got like a ton of followers, 60,000 followers or something like that. Now, I discovered you through some of our mutual connections originally, and then you're, you know, started following your posts, and I try to keep up as much as I could, but I did notice some posts recently about, um, your, I guess, your company's, uh I guess I don't even know how to describe it, like, like rocketing, um, achievements. I remember reading that you used to be at Wilson, and I— Wilson was a client long ago, probably before you were there. Wilson was a client of mine. I did some work with them, so I know that company. But the rest of your background has been— you did some college admissions. Uh, by the way, I went to RIT.

Oh, amazing! I'm currently sitting in my parents' house in West Irondequoit in Rochester, New York.

Oh, no way!

Oh, wow!

Oh yeah, I lived in Rochester for several years.

It's an amazing place. I love RIT.

Yeah, yeah, it is. I used to live in Chili.

Oh cool, I worked at Robert's Wesleyan, so right out in Chili.

Wow. Yeah, everybody calls it Chili if they're not from there, but it's—

yeah, they do. You know who the real natives are, right?

Exactly. Yeah, I had a little log cabin. It was awesome.

I'm sure you're sick.

Yeah, you also did some cool stuff. Um, so you were in admissions and Am I correct? Did you— were you in AmeriCorps or did you work with AmeriCorps?

I was in AmeriCorps, so I was one of the pre-college advisors at the University of Rochester, actually. So we worked with high school students to help get them ready for college. And then from there, I transitioned into working in admissions.

Got it. So I'm an RPCV. I don't know if you knew that. Yeah, pretty cool. So I have an affinity for RPCV and AmeriCorps. Or PCV— the Peace Corps is a lot better than AmeriCorps, but you know, sure, I'll take that. Different age groups.

Sounds way more exotic for sure.

Yeah, right, it's different age groups basically. It's like pre-college versus post-college. But anyway, just a little, um, friendly competition here. So then you worked with the Boys and Girls, and then you were at the RPO, um, Wilson OCG, TriNet, And then I guess you went to a corporation and then you decided, you know what, the hell with this, I'm gonna like go hang my own shingle, which I've done. And I can tell you from my experience, probably not the same as your experience, it was scary. It was really scary. So I guess my first question to just kind of kick things off and get really spicy really quickly, why? You went from volunteering to And, you know, college admissions to corporate recruiting to like, I'm just going to start a staffing firm.

Why not?

Nothing else. Why not?

So I think the theme of my career is I take massive leaps constantly, right? Like you saw, like I went from, you know, AmeriCorps, you obviously make pennies, like literally $0. So I thought I was a millionaire when from there I became an admissions counselor who also makes pennies. And then from there, you know, kind of like an upward trajectory the whole time, just realizing what I could build for myself if I just I just got better and better at my craft, better and better at recruitment. And honestly, that's what kind of pushed me to go start my own firm. I had been thinking like, man, I know how much we're billing our clients. I know how much I'm getting paid, and I know there's a huge disconnect. And my former CEO did me the massive favor of laying me off 5 weeks after my son was born. So I got a couple job offers from clients of mine, but I was like, you know what? No, I'm going to start my own business. And it's been honestly really fun. I've liked it better than working for other people, so I really enjoyed it.

Yeah, that's definitely one of those, like, you know, if you're gonna work for an a-hole, might as well be yourself, right?

There you go. Yeah. You get to be an a-hole on your own terms.

You couldn't have a worse or better boss.

That's true. You're so hard on yourself, but you're also like, let's get margaritas to celebrate.

Right, exactly. And then you're like, hey, it doesn't matter, it's my money, so I can do whatever I want. You know, I have to get approval from people and like, please, can I please buy this $20 tool? No. "Let's spend $5,000 on a stupid meeting that nobody wants to go to. Can I get this $20 tool?" "No." Whatever.

You get to make all the calls, even if you're the one who wants the ridiculous $500,000 thing.

So yeah, but then you can do it because you don't have to ask for permission. Funny how they don't need to approve for that, right?

I love not asking permission. It's my favorite thing.

Love it. So, um, yep, I guess the why is You just— you're a risk taker.

And I'm a massive risk taker. I'm super decisive. Like, my husband and I met and married within a year. Like, okay, you're the one, let's go, moving on. Um, we decided to have kids, we had kids, we had two, we moved on.

Like, we have like an outline and like a checklist of like to-do items. Like, do this.

We're essentially like, we're just like, that's what we're doing, we're gonna build the plane as we fly it. Like, that's just been my— that's my whole personality. So Yeah, I really wasn't scared. And I always knew nothing's ever set in stone. If it hadn't worked out, okay, I'll just pack it up and go get another W-2 job. And who's to say? I mean, life is long, right? I'm 35 years old. Who knows what the next chapter will be? I love running the business, so I don't anticipate packing it up anytime soon, but I just love that I always have options. And throughout the course of my career, I've always taken different options and honestly been happy everywhere I've been.

That's awesome. And 35 is nothing. I mean, yeah, you still have like a ways to go.

I do.

So yeah, absolutely. And I would love to be involved in your success somehow, even if it's a little bit. Um, would love to see you be super successful. It sounds like you already are on your way there. So, you know, for whatever encouragement you need, which doesn't sound like you need any from me, you still get— I'll take it. I'll still get the encouragement, you know. Thank you. Yeah. So, I mean, I asked you why, but I guess the big question is the, you know, the big takeaway is going to be how, you know, I mean, starting a business, any business, no matter what, in the middle of whatever this is, recession or whatever. I mean, it's 2 years ago, so it was still considered part of the recession. It was really early post-COVID.

Yeah.

Still a lot of uncertainty. We didn't even have a new president yet, and we were about to. And, you know, a lot— usually, just for those people that are wondering why am I mentioning that, I'm not into politics, but from a macroeconomic perspective when there's a shift in, in, uh, presidential executives, and also specifically when the party changes, right? So sometimes if it's, you know, the same party, but when it's a different party, there's always kind of this churn and this turmoil in, um, in different ways. So you have that turmoil, you have post-COVID, you have recession, and you still manage to make money when, when tons of people are like having a hard time finding a job?

Yeah.

So how?

So many answers to that question. So let me start with the timing. So yes, from a macroeconomic standpoint, the timing was bizarre. Like it made absolutely no sense.

But also there is no good timing to start a business anyway. I mean, it's not like, you know, there's, this is the, uh, the, the, let's consult the astrological chart and pinpoint the date.

Right, right.

Yeah. So yeah.

It's always a risk. It's always scary. And again, like, I've been thinking about it for a year, but I hadn't taken the leap because it is so scary. Like, a W-2 job, less— yes, obviously you can be laid off like I was, but it feels more secure to have that known paycheck than to go out on your own. At least it did for me at the time. Now, after 2 years of entrepreneurship, I feel differently. But at the time, what made me make the leap was, again, number 1, getting laid off. And then number 2, I'm going to be honest that I got 6 job offers within 2 weeks. And I was like, "Oh my gosh. A, this is amazing. B, how do I say yes to all of them?" And the answer was starting a business where all of them could become my clients. So 3 of them did. 3 of them quickly signed and became retainers with us. And then from there, that momentum kind of never stopped. Like we've just had a lot of— I think because like you mentioned, I am very open on LinkedIn. We've really built our company in public. Like I've shared our wins. I've shared— I'm very transparent about our revenue, about our team, about my ethos with hiring both internally and for my clients. So we've just— we struck while the iron was hot back in 2023 when I had all those opportunities. And then we've just never slowed down in that momentum.

Okay. And so, um, do you feel like the transparency on LinkedIn has helped with the business, or do you feel like that has just been, um, like a bonus? Like, you know, you know what I'm saying? Like, has that actually driven revenue?

Oh, 1 million percent. I can't even overstate. It is so confusing to me when people try to build businesses without LinkedIn. Like, I just don't know why you would do that. It's, it's like a free advertising platform. It's just crazy to me. So to your point, we were talking during like the pre-show about the LinkedIn algorithm. So I knew I needed to learn how to optimize it. So I, the first thing I did was I took a course on how to post so that your content is seen and engaged with. So I knew that I had to learn about how to do that on LinkedIn. So that's the very first thing I did when I decided to start the business. I took that course, I think like day one. And then really all my content has come from there. So I've used what I learned. I've taken the information from our business and I've just plugged them in. And a lot of our business has come from people who know me through LinkedIn and who saw my content and saw the stuff I posted about and wanted to connect because of that.

Okay. So you started with refer— you started with people that you already knew.

Yeah.

Which is, that's, I mean, that's literally like the best way to start a business.

Yeah.

Then you started becoming transparent. Did you know you wanted to be transparent on LinkedIn to get business, or did you know you just wanted to be transparent on LinkedIn and you got business?

Um, honestly, both. Like, I, I enjoy being transparent, like, just as a human.

Yeah.

One of our values at Aligned Recruitment is radical candor. I believe very, very deeply in being completely honest and finding a gracious way to share truths. Even when the truths are hard. So that's just a value that I hold as a person and as a boss. And then—

A little bit of Rochester in there too.

A little bit of Rochester. Yeah, I definitely have those long A's. Absolutely.

I mean, just the attitude too. I mean, like, you know—

Oh, the attitude. Yes.

Where else do you get Nick Tahoes and, you know—

The garbage plates.

The garbage plate. Yeah.

I live in Atlanta now. I miss the garbage plates so bad.

I live in Atlanta. Oh my God. We're like twins.

We have the same life.

This is so funny. That's great.

Um, yeah, we're down in the Peachtree City area. We're out in the burbs with all our kids.

So was it like, be transparent, got the business, or be transparent because I knew that would get the—

be transparent? And obviously I don't share— like, people ask me all the time, like, oh my gosh, like, I can't believe how much you share on LinkedIn. And I'm like, I share 1% of my thoughts. I'm like, shit, like, right?

But the thing is, you're sharing things that other people wouldn't share.

100%. 100%.

So that's kind of the— that's kind of the secret. That's what's different.

Yeah, is I'm— I share the things that I'm comfortable sharing. Like, I do not post pictures of my kids. I do not post like this super personal, super private stuff that I don't want the world to know. But yeah, the business stuff, I'm like, let's shout this from the rooftops. Like, to your point, this— I'm so grateful. Like, this business has been such a blessing to me and I want to talk about it. Like, I'm so excited for how it's taken off. So, so yes, to answer your question, I wanted both to get to share my story. Like, I just enjoy writing. I was an English major in college and I really do love to write. And then secondly, I knew that it would drive revenue. I knew that if I'm sharing my story well and communicating clearly, that companies would be stupid not to be like, wait, why is this going so well for you? I should talk to this girl.

Right?

So I knew that both things would happen.

It was part of the plan. It was part of the plan.

Yeah.

So let's say, do you mind if we kind of take the lid off and dig in a little bit into the business since you are so graciously transparent?

Yes, let's go.

Um, so elite— you mentioned elite recruiting. Uh, some folks may be like, oh God, elite recruiting, everybody, you know. But the point is that, um, you know, operating at this level, clearly you have the success and you're operating at this level. People do that. People operate at this level in staffing firms, in RPOs, in corporate. Um, you know, I, I would never describe myself as being elite, but I believe that I operate at the highest possible level. And I resonate with elite recruiting not being post and pray. And I talk about that. I talk about post and pray or pay and spray or like inbox recruiting or all these other things. There's a time and a place for that. There are, you know, again, in staffing firms and in RPOs and incorporated every flavor of recruiting. There is a time when you can post a job, get a bunch of applicants and sort through them. There are jobs where you can do that. There are jobs where you can't. And I've been my entire 30 years my entire career since you were 5, um, I've been working on these elite roles. I never call them elite, but they're basically the ones that nobody else wants to work on. They're hard to fill. So digging into that, since we know it's not inbox recruiting, since we know these are the jobs that it's— let's call it— I, I used to say it was about 15% of all jobs, but I don't know if that's an accurate number. At some companies, I've seen 50% of their jobs fall into this category. At others, I've seen only 10%. But whatever it is, these are the jobs nobody wants to take. They're open for a long time. They're difficult for a number of reasons. Let's talk about that. Week 1, critical search, elite job, right? Critical job, whatever you want to call it. What are your first 3 moves that everybody else skips?

Yeah. So actually, That's the secret sauce. I'm glad you asked me that because that's exactly why we've been so successful. Number one, my intakes are dramatic. Like the questions I ask the hiring manager, they're like, do you need my blood type? Like, what is going on here? Like, we ask a weird amount of questions. Like, we—

Oh my God, that's awesome. You should see my intake form. I'm going to send it to you because you're probably going to laugh your ass off. It is. Yeah, that is my— I've been doing this for 30 years, Julia, and everybody asks me the question about, you know, what's your secret sauce? Where, you know, the most critical point of failure in every single search, the most critical point of failure and the one where most people fail is the intake or the kickoff or the part where you talk to the hiring manager about what they need. And there's, believe it or not, you probably haven't seen this very much. There are recruiters who don't do that.

I've heard that. I've heard that. I've heard of some firms where they're like, listen, this is like the spec, like go recruit, right? Those are typically higher volume firms, right? Where they don't necessarily need to have this like deep dive or the jobs are not the ones we're talking about. Exactly. You're only talking to me who's— we're a white collar firm, right? Like you could get what I do from someone else way cheaper. You're only coming to me if those cheaper, kind of less high-touch options haven't worked for you.

Right, exactly.

Right. So, so yeah, so, so we start with the address.

One of the 3 things, give me one question that is like wacky that— not blood type, I'm sure you're not asking that.

Oh no, we get their Social Security. No, yeah, we don't do that. Um, so, so one question, I wouldn't say it's wacky, but I would say it's been really helpful for us. We ask, what is the— so part of our screener is Vibe check. Literally the word, the words vibe check, where we're basically giving some color between the lines of their like tactical, I've done this, this is where I've worked, this is what my KPIs were. We basically are describing their communication style, their kind of our read of their emotional intelligence, kind of their, what they described as far as how they've been able to, to relationally work throughout the course of their career. So we ask that in the intake, like, what are you looking for in terms of their soft skills? What are you looking for in terms of their vibe? We don't talk about culture fit. We talk about culture add. So I say, what do you want them to bring to the table that your team is currently lacking on the EQ side? Like, we don't just stick with tactics and must-haves. We go deeper into what is the psychology that you're looking for this person to have to contribute effectively to your team.

Okay. Yeah, so fair, uh, fair is fair. You gave me your one, one of your— quite sure that your form's as complex as mine. Um, so let me give you one that I, that I feel a lot of people don't ask. Please do, because, you know, the common ones are like, what are the, what are the must-have skills, what are the nice-to-have skills, you know, stuff like that. Um, one of the questions that I ask is I ask for the names of vendors and partners that either supply or serve their team. So, you know, who do they buy services or hardware or whatever? Who do they buy stuff from? And do you know why I do that?

No, I can't even imagine. Tell me.

Okay, because those people that sell to them also sell to other businesses like them. And so that gives me another vector to come up with target companies that are not on the list. If you ask a hiring manager, who should we be looking for people from? What are some companies where, you know, these people work? They're going to give you the, you know, the Hoover, uh, Fortune 500. These are our competitors. You know, if we're Coke, it's Pepsi, Snap, whatever. Like, no, I want the vendors because I want to find out who those people are selling to and if they're buying the same things they're selling to them. Now, I also would go back to the vendors and find who they are and actually see if I can talk to them and network with them because they'll know who the people that do this job at those other companies is as well.

Yeah. Oh my gosh, I love that. I'm gonna steal it.

Thank you. Yeah, go for it. Tit for tat, right? All right, so that's one. So it's the second 3 of the 3 moves. What's the second one?

Yeah. So then the second move is that we, 2 days later, so we have our intake call and then within the next 48 hours, we go out and we source 10 profiles based on that aggressive intake where we're like, okay, this is who you told me you wanted, like on paper, right? We haven't screened them yet. So we don't know all those, all those other details. But on paper, this is who you said you wanted. We get back on a live call with the hiring manager. We share screen and we go through every single profile and we say, I want your radically honest feedback about each of these people. Are they indeed what you're looking for? Now that you're seeing an example of what you shared with us verbally, this is what those people look like. Is this actually what you want? Are we actually on the right track? So we call that our calibration call because it calibrates like, okay, this is what you said, but are we actually on the same page? So typically the answer is yes, because we did that deep dive intake. But sometimes I'm interested, oh wow, this is really helpful. I actually don't want this, or I do want this, or isn't really what I'm looking for, or this is more of a need than I thought it was. So that is a must-have. We always, always do that.

So you want to know something funny?

I do.

I do the same thing.

As you should. That's why you're killing it.

But, uh, I do 20, and so now I'm thinking maybe I need to do 10. So I will do a— I will do a list of 20. And to do— to take it one step further, um, I don't know if you do this or not. I mean, maybe you do. What I'll— what I'll do is I'll do a research list of 20 And then I'll come up with a rubric for scoring them based on the intake meeting call, right? So if they said that they have to have a PhD, then that's one column. Do they have a PhD? And then there's like a, you know, scale of like 0, 1, or 2, or whatever. It doesn't matter what the scale is that sort of grades the, you know, the PhD. Like, is it spot on the PhD they wanted, or is it like an adjacent PhD, or, you know, like that. So I've got that column, and then I have a score. And so what I— the end, the end result is a list of 20 people with their, with their bios and their score and the columns with the rubric. And then I go back and ask for feedback and calibrate on the scoring as well. So even if worst case scenario, which doesn't usually happen, even if there's nobody on that list— let's say out of 20, there's none that they're like, yeah, let's, let's move this person forward. Even if that happens, I still have a calibrated rubric.

Yeah.

So the next batch, I run through that new scoring now that it's been adjusted. Because I might have said, you know, let's measure the PhD. And then on the call, the, the hiring manager will say, oh well, you know what, it doesn't really matter what— like, any PhDs, so don't even bother. That's not even— now that becomes a knockout instead of a qualification. Yeah, like half PhD, check. I don't even look at what kind it is as long as they have it, right? And now I have others, so I'll recalibrate. But what almost always happens is I get a minimum— I've never— I can't even remember a single time where I got less than 5 out of those 20 that they were like, let's move forward. But usually it's 10. So I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong, because you send 10 and I send 20, but I end up with 10.

And I'll be honest, typically we're we're at 8, 8 or 9 they say yes to. So I think maybe— because obviously you're good at what you do, right? So I think if maybe you just narrow your focus and let me know how it goes.

Maybe be pickier.

Try. Yeah, because if you're only pulling 10, you're only pulling the cream of the crop that you're finding as you're doing your preliminary sourcing.

Well, I thought that's what I was doing with 20.

Less is more.

No, you're right. I'm— hey, I'm learning already. So I feel my brain wrinkling as we speak. Yeah. That's, that's definitely good. Calibration. So intake, ding, ding, ding, ding. Calibration, so vital. And what's the third one?

So the third one is basically the, the culmination of both of those is that we build out our, our search, right? And we, we do, um, so I'm, I'm a really unique sourcer in that I I usually cast a wide net and then go granular. I shouldn't say that. I first go granular, and then once I've exhausted the granular, then I go a little bit wider. But I, I really play with sourcing throughout the whole kind of process, right? So like day one, I'll pull a search, message all those candidates. Day one or day two, I'll pull a totally different search. So the third step that I would say is a secret sauce really is like just broadly that we do source creatively and we change our search terms every single day. Like we're never just like, we've exhausted the pipeline, like there's no one else to reach out to. We're like, there's always a different Boolean string to try, or there's always, you know, a slightly different title search to run or, you know, whatever the case may be. So I would say that attitude towards sourcing is probably the last piece of the secret sauce.

Iteration. Iterative. Yep. So I'm starting to think that you read my book. I mean, maybe, or somebody you learned from read my book, because it's like, God damn, this is so familiar. Yeah, I mean, I can see why it works because it's, it's, that's worked for you, right?

Here you are.

Those are the 3 things, uh, that, that I do that I feel like are different than everybody else. There's others, but the other, the others are what I learned from people that taught me how to recruit. So, all right, let's Let's flip the page to go to, you found the people and now you're like vetting them. And you wrote about this 4-step vetting process to test for greatness, or I may be paraphrasing it. What's the 90-second version of what you test for or how you test it?

Good question. So that 4-step vetting process is for engineering candidates specifically.

Oh, okay.

So, okay, so just, just as a caveat, so step 1 is always like the verbal screen, obviously. Like, do you check these boxes? Step 2, we actually conduct a technical screen as part of that initial interview. So we don't just do like their background. We go into like, okay, we have these 10 questions prepared about your experience with Angular or React or.NET, and we conduct that right there on the phone screen.

And these questions are vetted with the hiring manager.

Yeah, we always run them by the hiring manager first. Sometimes they provide them. They say, actually, we want you to ask them these specific questions. But yes, we've created this list in tandem and then we send those results always to the hiring manager. And then the third piece is always a take-home engineering assessment. A lot of our clients prefer to do that live, which is fine, but we always offer, you know, there's different sites that we've used internally where we're the ones who conduct that assessment. So that's the third step that we find can be helpful. And then the fourth step is we're always doing like kind of the, the back channel evaluation. Like we're looking for what kind of work they've published.

Evidence.

Evidence. Yeah. Like code, code that they have, you know, publicly available. So that is— those are all pieces of the puzzle that we present to the hiring manager to say, okay, we've added them across these four categories. This is what we see. This is why we recommend that you move them forward.

And on the tech screen, um, the verbal screen, it's almost like table stakes. You've got to do that, obviously. Yeah. And the, the take-home assessment, as you said, sometimes they're going to want to do it— the company's going to want to do it themselves. And I can see where they might trust you to outsource it, so I get that. Uh, looking for evidence is different. That's something actually I do. And believe it or not, there's a rubric for that too. It's, it's a sourcing rubric. So yeah, but the tech screen Do you run into, or how do you handle running into either candidates or hiring managers who don't want to do that? In other words, hiring managers who are like, no, only my chief engineer is even capable of doing a tech screen. Nobody else in the entire effing universe is possibly capable of it. So how can you, you retarded recruiter, ever even dream that you might be able to? Like, I've run into hiring managers, I'm exaggerating, but I've run into hiring managers where like, Nobody but my people could do the tech screen. Like, really? You know, I'm capable of asking a question and writing down the answers, but okay, whatever. So how do you run into that? I mean, how do you deal when you run into that? Or the candidate that goes, nah, I don't want to talk to a recruiter. You guys are, you know, basically lower life forms. I want to talk to the actual hiring manager. So no, I'm not going to answer your questions. Like, I know that's— I'm being offensive a little bit because actually this has happened. Like, I've had hiring managers tell me No way, you can't do it. And I'm like, I have a computer science degree, so whatever. And I've had, I've had candidates say, I'm not going to talk to anybody unless it's the hiring manager. Now, I'm not going to tell you what I did in those cases, but it comes up. So what did you do?

Yeah, no, good question. And I am curious to hear what you do as well. So on the hiring manager side, when they say, hey, we actually want our engineering leader to vet them, I'm like, same, me too, 100%. What do you think about these 5 preliminary screen questions? Like just as like knockouts. Like if they can't answer these, then we know they're not a fit. If they can't answer, yeah, to the more. So I kind of come up with a compromise where I'm like, I agree, they do need the deeper dive with the engineering VP, right?

So you're still going to do that, but let us do a little bit of— okay, that makes sense.

Let's just make sure we're not sending you candidates who can't actually code, right? Like, let's make sure we're at least checking these boxes. And usually they're like, yeah, there's no harm in that. Like, sure, we'd love to see those answers. So that's how I resolve that issue when that comes up. On the candidate side, I'll be honest, I've really never had a candidate refuse because, like, you're already on the phone screen, so you're like, hey, you know, thanks so much for taking the time. We actually do it at the very beginning. We kind of do like the preliminary, like, here's the job, here's you, blah, blah, blah. Okay. Hey, before we jump into, you know, kind of walking through each of your last 3 roles, I want to just make sure that we're on the same page technically. So we're just going to run through a couple of really quick technical questions. Super simple, should be a piece of cake for someone with your background. Then we'll go into the background screen.

Got it.

Um, and I've literally never had a candidate say no. I'll be totally honest.

Interesting. Um, I probably, it's, it may be a factor of volume. Um, or it may be a factor of the nature of the talent. Sometimes it could be a, you know, for all I know, it may be an industry in specific where that, that I run into that. Um, looking back, I can tell you that there was Yeah, there was a little bit of a pattern with that particular job. So, it might have been. But it happened. So, hiring manager because that's very common. So, what I do is I, first of all, I don't oversell myself. I'm not going to be like, "Well, I could do it." And it's like, "You know, hey, I totally understand. How about this? Part of my job is to add value to the process. Part of my job is to reduce the false positives that you get." So, In the effort of reducing the amount of time that your chief engineer or whatever is going to be spending talking to candidates that are not going to be a fit, and it's wasted time because they're going to want to end the interview and out of politeness, they're going to, you know, stay on the phone for 20 minutes and that's 20 minutes they're never going to get back. So in the effort of avoiding that, um, I'd like to be able to at least ask a few things up front. So how about this? Let me sit in on 'One or two interviews with the hiring manager where I'm just the guest. So let me sit in or observe or whatever.' They usually don't object to that. They have recruiters do that anyway, but not specifically for this purpose. So, and then I say, 'Okay, and after, and after I observed a couple, then let me lead one and have that person observe.' Now they're not really working. They're just observing and supervising. And it's still, you know, the tech screen with them. And if they want to you know, jump in and take over, they can. But at least I'm leading. And the hiring manager is usually like, okay, sure, yeah. So you're gonna go, you're gonna, uh, whatever, um, you're gonna shadow, uh, an interview and then they're gonna shadow you. I'm like, yeah, and then you'll know whether or not I can do it or not. Like, you know, that then there's proof in, you know, pudding. Let's run a pilot and see how it works. Only really have to do this once with a hiring manager. Yeah, because after the second time that when the hiring manager shadows me they realize that I'm actually going into some, some technical depth that is sufficient for the phone screen. This is not the, you know, face-to-face interview or whatever. So when I come back with the feedback and the notes and the outline, they're like, oh yeah, okay. So I usually defeat that. Now the candidate— here's the weird thing. So it, it happened with candidates of a pretty senior level, and I think that there was a sense of entitlement. And I kind of— I'm wondering now, I'm gonna see if I can extrapolate this, but I kind of wonder if it's the same people that would refuse to do an online assessment, you know, like HackerRank or Coderpad or whatever. I think it's the same kind of person that's like, no, I'm too senior for this. I, I don't want to do your online test or your online challenge, and I don't want to talk to a recruiter. That may be the case.

Yeah.

But anyways, uh, what I ended up doing was I said, okay, I'll tell you what, Um, this is part of the process, and everybody that I work with, every candidate that comes through here, is going to follow the same process. Um, if you can't follow that same process for some reason, and it's a, you know, legitimate reason, like could be, um, you know, whatever, I, I don't even get into examples, but if it's a legitimate reason that you can't follow that process like everybody else, then we'll make exceptions for you. But if it's just that you're opting out, then you're opting out of the process, because otherwise it becomes unfair for every other candidate that's followed the process.

Yeah.

So do you really want to be the one that drops out because you didn't want to comply with our process unless you have a really legitimate reason, which is what exactly?

Yeah, I think that's totally fair. And I mean, we obviously have candidates who opt out every day.

It happens. And I, and I, some, and I go, oh, bummer. But you know what? I think that attitude might not really have landed. Maybe they're not really interested in the job in the first place. Maybe I haven't done a good job selling it, whatever. But it's just not not going to happen. So I let it go. But I definitely, if I'm supposed to do this for this job, I mean, not always doing it for these jobs, then I definitely do that. Otherwise, it's honestly just not fair. Yeah, you're giving somebody a pass to skip. Yeah, skip the line. Like, anyway, so how do you, um, this— you've got these tight processes. How do you scale your business? And I guess my first question would be, how is it scaling? Like, how big is the company now?

Yeah, yeah. So we're still very small. So I— we've just recently hired a director of recruitment who I'm absolutely obsessed with. She's a literal genius. So she runs our client relationships and does her own recruitment. So she's in a player coach seat. So she's both boots on the ground recruiting and she manages our team, which is 2 sourcers and another recruiter. And then that's the delivery arm of the business.

Got it.

Which frees me up completely to just focus on client acquisition. So the LinkedIn content, having sales conversations, moving prospective clients through the process.

So you're leading the value. You're, sorry to interrupt you, but you're, I think the answer is you're leading the value, you're leading the culture, and you're, as you grow, you bring somebody in to backfill your job.

Exactly.

And, you know, you very carefully teach them how to do it so they do it like you and, you know, adopt that culture. And then hopefully, as you scale, hopefully you'll be able to do that again with, with other roles, and your role will change again.

And so keep iterating and changing. Yep, that's exactly right. And then we have two operations managers who support both me on the sales side and Sam and her team on the delivery side. So there's a lot of work behind the scenes because, to your point, we're different because of processes. So to maintain those processes and continually update them, we have to have a really strong backend team. So that's the current state. And to your point, to your question of how have we scaled, it really has been, you know, A, as revenue allows, we're bootstrapped. We've been profitable since day one. We don't spend money we don't have. So I recruited up until I could safely and comfortably afford to bring on a director of recruitment and free my time up for other pieces. So that's kind of been our ethos as we've scaled thus far. So by training up my director of recruitment and all the processes that have worked for me thus far, she then has that so that she can scale up and train up her team as she continues to grow that side of the business.

Got it. Um, and, uh, yeah, that makes sense. It's, it's, it's, it's organic. Um, it's not artificial. I get that.

Yeah.

Um, I wanted to turn the page again and go into another aspect of the business, and this is is for me, something that really pisses me off.

Let's go there.

Yeah, let's just go there because I see this all the time in all kinds of organizations as a consultant, as an advisor, you know, helping build and rebuild companies, recruiting teams, helping create sourcing teams, helping turn recruiters into sourcers. I see this all the time and it's leadership. Recruiting leadership, TA leadership, RPO, staffing firm, corporation, doesn't matter. Leadership that equates activity with impact. In other words, they're measuring things that you do now. And I understand the need to, from the driver's seat, measure the pieces that come together and produce the whole. I get that, you know, from just-in-time management and quality management and all. I understand that. But it doesn't mean that if you do the— if you manage for the activity, you get the impact. For example, and this is— I want to demonstrate why I'm so angry about this.

Sure.

If you— I've seen this happen way too many times. If you tell the recruiters that they need to have 10 submittals per hiring manager, yeah, they will have 10 submittals per hiring manager. Yeah, they will do exactly what you ask them to do. If you incentivize them in any way to do that, they are going to do that. If it's an incentive by like you get punished if you don't do it, whatever. But 10 interviews doesn't necessarily guarantee a successful outcome.

Totally.

Number one. Number two, and this is the, let's just say, abstruse or oblique angle, I strongly believe This may not apply in a staffing firm as much, but I strongly believe that as a recruiter, you are providing value even if the person you present doesn't get hired. For this reason, you are providing decision support. If a hiring manager only has one candidate to look at and they get a second candidate from you, and now they have a way to compare, they have a point of— they have a perspective they can measure, and they can you know, make a decision. Let's say they decide with the candidate they originally had and they don't use yours. You are still responsible for having moved that along, even if they didn't go with your candidate. Now, I know that if you're commission-based, you don't get the commission, right? Still had impact. In other words, what I'm telling you is that the impact that we have isn't just filling the rec. And so, if we're looking at how many emails you sent, as, as a measure of impact, I just— does it— anyway, I want to like completely eliminate that. I wish we would erase the whole concept of you're as good as how many hires you made, because even that doesn't make any sense. I can make 2 hires a year, but they're both CEOs and I make millions of dollars. And you can make 2,000 hires a year, but they're all, you know, blue-collar laborers, and you're only getting 5 bucks a placement. I mean, Obviously exaggerating on both ways to make a point. But you see what I mean, right? So why— actually, you know what? I don't even care why that happens.

Well, and I think you made a really good point that, yes, I think activity is a poor metric across the board, whether you're an internal or external recruiter.

What have you banned? What have you said no to? Like, what have you said, we are not going to, um, we're not going to measure this activity because it's just pointless?

Well, everything but offers. I was going to say that's where we differ, is because I am an external recruiter our, our, our contribution to our client has to be a hire is indeed the candidates who we actually do get hired there.

So, but, you know, consolation prize, if you present a candidate and they make a decision and go with a candidate they already had, you still, you know, I mean, you're not going to get a commission, but you still did help with that hire.

100%. No, I think, I think we definitely make, make an impact on our clients regardless of whether or not we hire for them. I totally agree with you. But the thing that I compensate my recruiters on, like the way they get their bonuses, is solely on hires. I've been in environments, I agree with you, where I was compensated by the number of submits I got. And like, yeah, did I always have my submit number? Of course. But like, were they the cream of the crop candidates that they would have been if we were compensated and if they actually got hired? No. So I completely agree with you. I think the best advice I've gotten as a recruitment leader is that you should only pay your recruiters for the exact behavior that you want to drive. So if the behavior you want to drive is just busyness and activity, like, okay, then count the number of emails, right? But if you want to compensate on actual, hires made, then that's what You, that's what you bonus for.

So, OK, so maybe I asked the wrong question. Are there any activities that you banned because it looked productive but didn't actually move the needle?

Are there any activities I banned?

Or, you know, discouraged?

I haven't had to, honestly, because I, my, my team is very strong and they have hit the hiring KPIs. Like in her literal first month here, my director of recruitment made 4 hires, right? Like, so it's been very, which is high for us because we, to your point, we're more like the 2 CEOs a year than we are like the 2,000 blue-collar hires a year. So that was, that was really good to see. So, I have benchmarks, like I'm like, shoot for—

Benchmarks for steering the ship.

Yeah.

But not for—

Shoot for these numbers. But yeah, no, it's nothing that I would ever say, like, if you don't get this. And no one has ever said to me like, oh, but look at all my activity if they're not hitting their numbers. They're like, yep, you're right, right, right. And I'm like, yeah, you do.

But even, I mean, even in the most lean-run environment, there must be sometimes the urge to, to look and see if someone's, you know, doing what they said they did, um, as a manager, right? Like, are they actually— I don't know, there may be times when you question that. I know I've questioned that as a leader a few times, like, are they actually— did they actually go to work today? Because I didn't see any activity, you know. Now, I'm not measuring activity, but I'm kind of scratching my head going, where is the activity? Shouldn't there some activity. I'm not measuring it, but at least I would expect to see some. So yeah, I guess I was really more looking for some, something that, what is the, how do you measure the lift short of the offer? Obviously, that's the outcome. But how do you measure the lift to the outcome?

That's it. We're external recruiters. So it's the offer. I mean, I keep an eye on submits for sure. Like I keep an eye on like, okay, how many candidates do we have? We call it in process. So all the way from submit stage to up to hire, we aim for a ballpark of 4 candidates somewhere in there. That's not like a hard and fast. If you dip to 3 on a Tuesday because they said no to your finalist, right? But that's kind of the benchmark I look at leading up to that hire benchmark is, okay, are you at least from submit to final, do you at least have a good swath of candidates for the hiring manager to choose from?

So it's not a hard number and that's fine. I was just looking for what replaced the activity with, you know, with what. So, because another thing is, and I don't know if this is in your business, but in a lot of the, you know, companies that I advise, they do want to have, the leadership team does want to have a little bit of a timeline. Now, I think you're working against the clock, so it might be a little bit different. But with what I'm explaining, sometimes they kind of need to know that we're going to meet that timeline. So I can do the math backwards. As you said, and basically we know that typically we need to have whatever, 7 in progress in order to get this thing closed. So if we're at 4, then, you know, we're running behind basically. So that's really just a matter of me saying, yeah, I might need some more time before we actually run out of time. And so it's not because I'm not going to go back and go, hey team, you guys are only, you know, you're, you're, you're not doing your activity. It's more like, um, now since we only have 4 and I know that we're doing the best we can and we need 7, we still have, you know, however many efforts or cycles or whatever left. So that's the reason that I was looking at it. Um, but not because I was like, yeah, submittals or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, I get that.

It makes sense. I think because of your constraint being, um, as fast as possible, right? Where in some cases I'm working on something that like if I go back to the hiring manager and say, might need a few more weeks. They're not going to be like, oh, well then that's it, you're fired. You know, some of these searches might take a little longer and it's better to just tell them, like you said, right? Brutal candidness. Like, yeah, we've, you know, we've done a bunch of things. Here's everything we've done. You can see what we've done. But, um, but, you know, we're not measuring the activity. We just like, we're showing, hey, we're doing everything we already, we already know how to do. And normally we have this outcome. Based on past experience, but we're not there and we need a little bit more time. Stuff like that. That's kind of more, um, I probably think more on the corporate side, not on the RPO and staffing.

Yeah, I agree. That's a good distinction.

Wow, I wish we had like another 2 or 3 days to be on, on this show.

Well, after running a retreat.

Yeah, yeah, I didn't realize I didn't actually— why did I not know that? I probably didn't even connected to. But yeah, we definitely should. Um, and, uh, it's not unusual for people to come back on the show again if they tolerated the first one. So I love it.

Let's keep that door open.

I do have to ask you at least one question that I ask everybody, and that is, who should be our next guest?

Oh, Diane Prince, hands down.

Did you plan for this?

Yeah, no hesitation. Yeah, right. No, she started and sold a $28 million staffing company 20 years ago and now works as an executive coach for recruitment agency owners. She's a genius. She's my executive coach.

I mean, is she gonna accept it? It doesn't matter, I'm gonna invite her anyway.

But oh, she'll accept the invite. She's down, she's down for a good time.

All right, it is on then. I will reach out to her. Thank you so much. For, uh, being my digital twin, apparently. Well, you're not digital, but my online twin. Uh, look forward to hopefully, you know, bumping into you in Atlanta or making a plan. Bye everybody, we'll see you next Friday here on