Seth Davis Live on Shally's Alley - Happy New Year!

Yo, yo, yo, what's up? How is everybody doing? You are live on Shelly's Alley. No, your camera is not broken. I am wearing a beanie. That is because I am currently broadcasting from an undisclosed location in the North Pole. No, I'm just kidding. Pretty darn close though. Let's just say I'm north of the Canadian border, but I'm still in the United States. For those of you that are scratching your head wondering what the heck does that mean, I'm actually in central Maine, which is where my family, my wife's family is. So my in-laws and my nephews and all that, and they are all up on the slopes hitting, hitting the ski lift for the third time. I had my fill already, so I'm staying, I'm staying in today to keep warm. It is 10 degrees, and I think I saw 9 of them walking down the street over here not too long ago, and then the other one might still be on the mountain. But man, it is cold out there. So, uh, thanks for joining me and keeping me warm. Our guest today is Seth Davis. Now Seth has an interesting background. He's one of the Atlanta crew. Can we call us the Atlanta crew? Are we the Atlanta— he's signed. We're the Atlanta crew. Atlanta group.

Yeah, I think we are. I avoided people for the longest, but yeah.

Yeah, well, you still do, but that's okay. That's a different story. Well, that'll be the topic for the next podcast: how to avoid people and still have friends. Um, we managed to stay friends even though he completely avoids everybody. Um, no, I'm just kidding. No, Seth had, uh, had a very, very cool job leading a sourcing team, and it was his first job as a sourcing team leader when we connected, and we had some you know, we shared some ideas, some thoughts. Uh, I, I, you know, take a little bit of credit for having counseled him through a couple of, uh, rough times. But then, you know, things happen, the pandemic, blah blah blah blah, and Seth went on to be a full-cycle recruiter. Now he's, he's moved into the other side. Um, so, you know, first question is, which one's better, sourcing or recruiting? And there is a wrong answer.

They're, they're both equally important.

I would say, sure, which one's better for you?

Okay, let's get, let's get off So better for me is sourcing because that's the most difficult part from, from my point of view. And I like the challenge. I think for nothing against recruiters who handle kind of the back end, but I think if expectations are set on the front end, the back end's the easy part, the negotiating piece, because expectations have already been set. I think finding folks is the hardest part of the job. And that's, that's what I enjoy is that challenge. You're spending time trying to identify solid folks.

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, we talked about this before, but one of the things that kind of drives people that are interested in the sourcing side, or the top of the funnel, or whatever you want to call it, is, um, is the challenge of, you know, solving puzzles, or, or the thrill of finding, you know, the, the hunt, the seeking, the, the solving of the mystery. Um, it's something that's interesting to us. And to people who enjoy recruiting, that's not necessarily their favorite part. You know, they like the people, the negotiation, the relationship building. Whereas people who are, you know, more on the sourcing side, um, you know, they can— if they, if they do it, great. And, you know, some of us are full life cycle like you. I've been full life cycle many times, but we do enjoy that sort of puzzle-solving part of it, you know, the, the, the constant breaking of paradigms and shifting and, and stuff like that.

Exactly. And to your point earlier, you know, I avoid people. I always say this, and I'm not even joking, I don't like people. Um, you You know, following— being a recruiter, not liking people is interesting, but on the sourcing side, you do not have to interact with a lot of folks. So I enjoy that. I think most people who've been around me know I'm personable, but it's not my comfortable zone, you know, in my comfort zone to be that people person. So it is that challenge, that solving things, that engineering piece is the most exciting to me.

That's true. Yeah. And, you know, I think it was Asimov— I was a huge as a Muff fan, uh, as a, as a young boy and teen and even throughout college. Um, and I think he might have been the one that said— I, I think he was the one that said, I love humanity, it's people I hate. It's like, you know, humanity as a whole, like, you know, we, we, we're part of it and we want to make it better, but every once in a while you just bump into somebody, they just like, uh, no, like, well why does this have to happen, right?

Exactly.

You do get to avoid some of that if you want to and kind of dip your toes in it. Yeah, you don't.

Um, and that's why you and I—

tell me a little bit about the transition from— what's that?

I was saying, that's why you and I don't live in downtown Atlanta. Uh, there's too many people, too much traffic.

Yeah, it's— yeah, we're both kind of out in the outskirts. Yeah, that's for sure. So tell me a little bit about making the jump from, uh, from a team lead— well, yes, from a, from a manager, and specifically manager in sourcing, to a full life cycle recruiter. How has that transition been? And I'm sure others out there may be struggling with making that transition as well, you know, because a lot of change in the industry. And, you know, tell us a little bit about how you manage that and what could, what could we other— what could those of us that are doing that learn from what you went through.

Yeah, so I think I've been, you know, individual contributor, went to manager, back to individual contributor. Um, I think for me it's really understanding what you want, where you want to go with your career, what you enjoy. I still have a desire to move up in my career. Um, I don't want to stay, you know, in my current role forever. And so I think leadership introduces that challenge. Leadership is not for everyone though. It is a completely different skill. Just because you're an amazing sourcer recruiter doesn't mean you're going to be a good people leader. You could be all. I like to think I was pretty decent. I think if you talk to people that worked with me, they would say I was pretty decent. But I still get fulfillment from mentoring others. And so even as an individual contributor, you can act as that team lead, right? You still can act as that—

Subject matter expert advisor.

Exactly. Upskilling people, upleveling people, helping them where they need that. And so I think if you enjoy leadership and maybe that's not in your role, you still have an opportunity to really impact those around you. And if your goal is to get into leadership and you're not mentoring, coaching others, you're missing, right? Why would I promote you to a manager if you're not even doing that?

You haven't shown that you have the capability of sharing with your gift of, you know, taking a leadership position, even if it's not a leadership role with responsibilities. So tell me, tell me this from a, from a well-roundedness in business. You started in sourcing and then you shifted to— this is your first full desk recruiting job, right? You started in sourcing.

I actually, I started in agency, which is—

you started in recruiting, went to sourcing, and now you're back. Okay, correct. Yeah. Is there a benefit? Should, should people who are in sourcing roles, uh, seek out to be full life cycle recruiters for a portion of their career for any kind of well-roundedness, or is that really not necessary? I know you're doing it, but does that something Should others follow suit or not really?

I don't think it's necessary. I think a piece that some sourcers or sourcing teams miss is being part of the business, having close contacts with the business. Depending on how things are set up at the company you work for, recruiters may be the one managing all the stakeholder relationships. In my opinion, it shouldn't be that way. Sourcing should be there at the table as well with recruiting. So you need to really understand the business in order to source well, in order to identify candidates. So I don't think you necessarily need to move into recruiting to make that happen. But if you're in a position or a company where sourcing is not at the table, you need to see what you can do to influence it so you are part of all of those conversations. You need to be part of kickoffs, you need to be part of syncs, you need to really dive into the org to understand. And I think, you know, I've done tech for the most part, and I think on the sourcing side and on the recruiting side, it's really understanding the environment which you're recruiting people into, including the tech environment, that architecture. You really need to understand the entire picture of what that architecture looks like so you can speak to it. I'm never going to pretend to be— I'm, I'm an engineer, that I know everything, but I've been told a lot of times by candidates, hey, I thought you were the hiring manager because you know so much about this. That's what we want in order to identify people, and it can make the hiring manager conversations more productive if on the front end you've already kind of gone over a lot of this, gotten them excited. Now again, that conversation can be more productive at the next level.

So what I'm hearing is more, more on the— more on the lines of like kind of know where where your technology is. And so you don't have to know how to do it, but what's around it, above it, to the sides, and be able— and recruiting as a role can help you with that, but you don't need that. You can also do that with sourcing if you choose to get involved. But what you're saying is that you should choose to get involved with more than just the, you know, the recs that you're working on and understand the full stack, or the full— if you're not in technology, the full business scope. And I think recruiting and sourcing and talent acquisition in general is a really good place for that, even as a career transition for some folks that have gone outside of TA and into other roles. So I hear that it's kind of like, if you're not— if you don't want to be an individual contributor recruiter, then just seek out— what you're saying is seek out that knowledge another way, right? So that you become more well-rounded within the organization and understand sort of talk the talk and be able to connect with candidates and, and hiring managers when you need to, even if it's not part of your role.

Exactly.

I like that answer.

I would say my advice would be don't stay in your lane, right?

Don't stay in your lane.

Yeah.

Uh, cautiously merge into other things.

Exactly. Yeah, depending on which red tape environment you're in.

Yeah, cautious traffic regulations, but try to switch lanes once in a while. Yeah, um, for those of you that don't know Seth, there's a, there's a hidden past. Uh, he's a former law enforcement officer, and I'm not going to get into any detail. He's asked me not to share, uh, that aspect of his former life. But I wanted to ask if there's, if there's any lessons to be learned from being in the law enforcement career, or in a, uh, what's the word, um, in the justice system, right? Is there any lessons to learn from there that you can carry on to recruiters or sourcers from the point of view of like, you know, maybe somebody out there is in law enforcement and interested in switching careers, or maybe those folks out there that don't have that kind of background could have, you know, could maybe their eyes could be open to something that might be an interesting opportunity. So anything, any words of wisdom you can share from that?

I would say, so I was the president of my academy class. I had to speak at our graduation and I ended the speech with treat everyone you meet with respect. Um, the person you arrest tomorrow could save your life. The person you arrest today could save your life tomorrow, right? Uh, and I truly believe that. What I learned is, and not to be too transparent and go down this road, but a lot of things that maybe you and I are ignorant to because we are white men happen in law enforcement, and it is a systematic issue. There are a lot of individual good people but there are a lot of systematic things that for people of color, they get targeted. It's just what it is. And I couldn't stand being in that environment. I'm also a nice guy, so yelling at people is not really in my genes. But what—

the view— it opened your eyes to some unfairness or imbalances in the system that made you better informed and perhaps a better relationship builder with, with all walks of people.

Exactly, exactly. And that's what I took away. I mean, exactly, your word's probably better than mine. But I, again, growing up as a white guy in North Georgia, I was ignorant to a lot of this. You see it on the news, but like, I've never seen it in person. Does it really happen? That kind of thing. But actually being in the system and you see this happen day in and day out and you're like, this is BS, right? I want to go make an impact. And so that for me really changed my mindset. After that, I ended up getting an MBA, really started focusing on recruiting because I want to help identify underrepresented folks. I want to make sure they get a fair shot. And again, prior to that experience, I didn't really have that mindset because again, it was— I was just ignorant to it. But I think that is the biggest thing.

But also, you know, I would open your eyes to advocacy, to be an advocate and an ally. Having experienced, you know, secondhand, but having observed that behavior that is reproachable and the systemic issues that we're trying to fix, you now have a better— you're in a better place to have those conversations where you maybe just didn't even know about them before.

Exactly. Exactly. And I'm thankful for that. I think, you know, you know that very few people who are in my life know that I was you know, a police officer at one point. But I'm really thankful for that experience. I was in recruiting. I was tired of it, like we all get tired of it at some point. And I, I'd always wanted to be a police officer. Never, you know, my mom didn't want me to do it, so I had avoided for the longest time. But I'm like, all right, I'm gonna go in again. I went in and did it. I was the president. I was— I won the academic award. I had a 96 average on all of our written tests. I did really well. But I got in there and I can realize this is not for me. This is not what I'm cut out for. And it opened my eyes to other things. So I think it's also I think a story of if you want to try something else, go do it, um, right? Like, and be successful. Don't half-ass it. Like, put all of your heart into it. Go do it.

Go for it. And also recognize when it's not for you.

Exactly.

Don't feel stuck. Like, you know, some people may feel like they're in a dead-end role. I mean, I, I've worked a lot when I still had the foundation. I worked a lot with people that had felt in their lives that they were— I don't want to say pigeonholed, that's not the right word— but that they were sort of cornered into something that they just didn't really have much of a choice. And, um, and now I know the foundation's job was to provide them an opportunity for that choice, but still, most of the time they didn't even feel like they had it. And it was almost like part of our job was— when I started out doing it, I thought it was going to be about the skills. Let's, let's teach people the skill of this job so they can do it. And it turned out that it wasn't the only thing that we needed to do, but we also needed to change the mindset of what you're describing, which is, you know, you gotta put your heart into it and try it. If you're interested in it, put your heart into it, try it, do it. And, and worst thing that can happen is you don't like it. Okay, so you try something else. But if you don't give it your effort, then you really won't know whether you like it or not. So I think what you're saying is is that that was a good lesson in open-mindedness round trip, right? Going into a different field and then coming back from that field again to repatriate into your—

Exactly. And luckily enough, you know, I have a support system around me. This was obviously before you and I chatted, but, uh, or before you and I met, but I have a support system around me that was also 100% on board when I made that decision. They're like, I'm scared, but absolutely go do it. And then when I said, made the decision, all right, it's not for me, and said, okay, you know, good for you. You tried it, you didn't like it, now let's move on to the next part of life.

So what about, uh, is this— may just simply be my, my romantic, my romanticization or my, um, my watching too much television, but is there a component in, in, in that kind of career that has a lot to do with working as a team member? In other words, like, I just see sometimes, uh, and, and forgive me for kind of jumping into a bit of a political statement here, but a lot of recruiters and sourcers are sort of solo operators, right? They— and it's, and it's a, it's a career choice. You can be a consultant and be a solo operator. But I think that in general, uh, recruiting tends to not know too much about being a team, right? Is there a component that we could learn from as far as being team members within recruiting and sourcing, because I think we lose on— we lose a lot about that. When I, as a consultant, when I go into businesses, Seth, I see a lot of organizations where the recruiters just simply don't talk to each other. And it's not because of— like, I used to think it was an agency, you know, when you and I grew up in the agency world and it was like my candidates, you know, like hoarding of— I don't— it's not that anymore. That may have been what it was earlier in my career, but now it's just simply the system just doesn't really, you know, you got your recs and if you don't fill your recs, you're, you're out of a job. It doesn't encourage us to share candidates, to share knowledge. To me, that was the biggest difference. The biggest impact that I made in, in SourceCon, in the sourcing community, was when SourceCon started, uh, you know, I was one of the early founders there. Um, it was a lot about sharing in an environment where people were like, I can't believe you're sharing all that. Like, You know, so talk to me a little bit about the aspect of teamwork.

Yeah, I think as a manager and also, you know, yeah, in your former career, I think, um, in former career, you have to trust the people around you. Yeah, 80% of the calls you go on, you're going to be by yourself, but the other 20%, you're going to have others show up, and you have to trust that they have your back.

And you may not— you may not know who they are.

Right, exactly. And if you're in a lot— if you work in Atlanta PD, there's thousands of people you've never met before, but you have to know that they're capable and they have your back. I think in recruiting, to your point, like, we own our own desk. Even in the corporate world, we own our own desk. The only time we see other recruiters is when we have team meetings, and there is not that collaboration, there's not that trust. And I think that is something that we are missing. Um, I think I never want to go back to an office. I'm not, not saying that that's where we should go. But I think there is a positive to your team being near you at some point, even if it's once a month, right? Just to, to, to, you know, create those relationships, earn that trust from each other, because otherwise it is on you individually or your leader to create that, right?

Even if it isn't, you need to— right, you need to make a virtual case for sharing. And that's something that I see companies struggling with. And as my, my job is to advise senior leadership. A lot of times they're coming to me saying, how do we encourage that? Because they want to make, you know, they recognize the benefit of that team setting, but, but it's like the frontline, you know, recruiter sourcer is so stuck in like my recs that it just, it becomes this big gap. Right. So I have to work with organizations and advise them on how to try to build that. And sometimes it's successful, sometimes it's not. There is a little bit of company culture involved. But I also think that as an industry in general, we are missing out on— and maybe it's because of what you said, and I want to connect back to this real quick. So you said in your former life you had to trust them because you had to, you know, you had to trust that they were capable. And I think that comes from having in any industry, in any job, that comes from having formalized training and, you know, a system that, that, that produces certain basic skill sets that are kind of requirements for the job. I don't think we have that in recruiting. And I feel like that may be part of where there's this gap is everybody sort of arrives at recruiting. Well, not everybody, but most people arrive at recruiting in some other way. You know, not all of us unique. Some people, yeah, they went to, you know, like Aerotech, which is, uh, Tech Systems or whatever. They had a very thorough training program, and there are places like that. But generally speaking, most of us weren't part of that. And so we arrive at this team environment where there's 8 of us or 12 of us, and we probably have never met, may never even meet, and may only be on a meeting once a month. There's just simply no common language. We don't even, you know, I have conversations about intake meeting, kickoff meeting, uh, uh, brief, uh, recruiting brief. Everybody calls it something different. And I guarantee you there's no two recruiters, unless they've been through formal training and they, you, and they did and they applied the training, no two recruiters that have the same format for how they ask a hiring manager about the requirements or how do they clarify or whether or not they even do it. Yeah. And when they do it, there's no standardization. So how can you rely on your team when there's just no team forming?

It's a good question. I think to your point, and you know, law enforcement or military, everyone goes through the same training. So even if, Shelly, I don't like you, you went through the same training as I did. I know you're capable. I know you have my back, right?

You got here You deserve it. You're on, right?

Exactly.

Whatever else happens now, you can take it at face value. But at least we both got here the same way, right?

Exactly. Yeah. But, but to your point, recruiting, sourcing, there's no test, there's no basic training that you have to pass to get there. And there's a lot of egos that come in recruiting that's not necessarily in other industries. I mean, it is, but there's egos and I'm better than you and I have no idea what training you went through. So I'm automatically not going to trust you. I don't want to collaborate with you because again, I'm better than you. And so I think it's hard to do that. I think that the collaboration piece is on leadership to figure out. I think in my view, it should be fun. We don't want to force, all right, let's do team meetings every week or twice a week just for the hell of it. Let's make it fun. I make it be happy hours. We could do escape rooms, virtual escape rooms, like anything like that. To build that teamwork. It's where we're really getting to know each other. I think one of the funnest things I ever did was in high school. I played football and we went to this like teamwork camp, and you had every single thing we did, like rope climbing and all these different things, but you had to work with at least one other person on every single thing that was there. That was the most fun I've ever had. I didn't even really like most of these guys I went to high school with, but that trip, I still remember almost the entire trip because it was so fun. And I had to work with all of these guys, which again weren't my favorite. Some of them were just complete jerks, but we worked together to accomplish the mission. And that really built our teamwork and collaboration, which I think in the corporate world, if you can find something like that— doesn't have to be physical activity, right? But if you can find something like that, that would go a long way.

Yeah, I think that's something that's definitely missing. So if you're, if you're a leader and you're listening and you're struggling to build teamwork, maybe, you know, this helps you, gives you some insight as to why perhaps that the teamwork isn't there, and it's hard to make it happen. But you do need to try and make it happen because it's— it will move the entire organization forward. One of the things I like to do is remind people that where, you know, they asked me about metrics, and they go, well, what are the best KPIs or measurements for success or whatever? And when I come back, I always come back and I say, look, there's two. There's individual ones, and then there's team ones. So don't forget that there's got to be team metrics, right? You can, you can measure individual performance compared to other people in a similar role, but at the same time, you need to measure the team's performance. Because even if one individual is underperforming and another individual is overperforming, the team may still be achieving its goals. Or you might have 3 top-notch performers and the team may not be achieving its goal. And that's something you got to look at as a manager. And I think we sort of forget about that, you know, sometimes. I've been in a position where I had to carry— I had to unfortunately carry other people's weight, where I was doing the job of 2 or 3 other people in order to meet the team goals and wasn't recognized. Right.

And that, that's a disincentive for you to continue your hard work, right, if you're having to carry others. But it's also an opportunity potentially if you you have an overachiever and you have an underachiever, can they work together? Um, right, to— we don't want the overachiever to— we don't want to hurt their performance, right? But can they help this underachiever get, um, to where they're meeting their goals as well? Um, rather than just let's put them on a PIP and try to get them out here, can we partner them with someone on the team who is more—

or find that, yeah, maybe they're not in the right role, right? Maybe they shouldn't be working with tech people. See, maybe if they can recruit for sales or marketing or something else. Yeah, that's a good point. I also wanted to touch on technology a little bit because you and I share the opinion, and I know a lot of folks that don't know me well might be surprised about this, but you and I share the opinion that a tool is just a tool. And we very frequently get sort of enamored, or I like to call it bright shiny object syndrome. I don't claim for inventing that word, but the whole, you know, like there's a new tool, everybody flocks to it, and people think that, you know, this just— I'm gonna adopt whatever, you know, SuperDigger or, uh, you know, SearchX or whatever, and it's gonna make— it's gonna make my career. Like, honestly, I can say as, as an avid tools user and someone who's taken tools to lengths that they're not even designed to do, I still think that they're like you there's a fundamental to this job that has nothing to do with tools. And you can do it, as my friend Amanda Jannat is fond of saying, you can do it with a crayon and a napkin. I mean, you know, you wouldn't want to, but I mean, you can. So yeah, why do we, why do we have this sense that we must have the tool, that we must have the technology in order to do the job? I know that it's an advantage to have these tools They help us do our job like in any other job. But why in our industry are we so kind of like, I don't know, dependent?

It's, it's fun, right? And I think even when you look at, you know, AI, every business unit leader wants to implement AI in their team, in their process, even if they don't know what AI means. Right? Because to your point, it's that shiny object out there. Oh, it's this buzzword. We got to implement it. We got to implement it.

Why?

Like, what are we trying to solve? What is the business justification for that? I think, again, as people, especially sourcers who enjoy research, it's fun to have all these tools to play with. So anything that's new is coming out. It's like, yeah, let's have fun. Let's do this. But again, sometimes we forget the basics of I still have stakeholders to manage. I'm right. I need to make sure my hiring leaders are engaged or happy. I need to make sure my candidates are engaged and happy. I need to make sure my internal partners, you know, comp, HR, are all happy. And we forget that because we're over here playing with this tool. Yeah, maybe it'll help us streamline some of what we're doing, but oftentimes we spend so much time just spinning our wheels playing with this stuff that it doesn't really get us the results that we're doing.

Whereas we might even be distracted, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Or the, oh, I gotta make this work. Or, or what I— my favorite one, we just invested X dollars on this tool, we got to make it work. It's like, well, what's more important, uh, making the, the tool work for you even though you don't really need it, or actually getting the job? Like, I mean, forget the X amount of dollars you just invested. If it's not helping you do your job, don't renew the tool. I mean, yeah, sure, you, you blew your budget on it, but it's not working. Don't force people to use it. This fun story— oh my God, I don't know if I've ever shared this with you, but there was, uh, you— do you remember Second Life?

Yeah.

Okay, so there was an organization— some people out there are going to know what I'm talking about— that when Second Life just kind of exploded and became this big social phenomenon, they went and they spent a bunch of money, and I mean six figures, on an island on Second Life, and they put all their recruiting effort into this, into this, you know, virtual space. And they even had recruiters— like, I don't want to say forcing, but they had recruiters sort of directing candidates to that so that they could show results from it. So they made 6 hires from this island, and it cost $100,000, right? But they had results. Well, the same 6 hires probably would have walked in the door. I'm not saying— maybe not, I don't know. But like, right, it just seems like they, they forced the tool to perform, um, even if it had to be artificially, because— and that's without that, can't we?

Right. It's cool. I mean, it's a good story to tell. I mean, it's really— it sounds like a Match.com or something, but it— that would be a really cool, um, story to show. But to your point, if you spend $100 grand, you get 6 hires, You know, it's $16,000 per hire. You could have hired an agency or just use your internal talent.

And, you know, so many other—

yeah.

And by the way, when Second Life fizzled out, that was that. That was that. Yeah.

But I do like the experimentation thing. I think I'm, I'm, I'm never one for perfect, right? Like near perfect or good is good enough. Like that experimentation is critical, but don't spend so much time on that experimentation that again, you're not doing the basics, you're not meeting expectations because you're out out here, you know, playing with tools. And you have plenty of downtime, um, to do that stuff if, you know, if you want to. And again, I think we're in a space where a lot of what we do can be automated. I don't think it can take away necessarily what, what we can do, but it can make us more efficient. And so that is something I'm excited for. And I do use, quite frankly, ChatGPT almost daily, um, just for, for things that, you know, you send me a text and it really, you know, pisses me off. I want to write back to you. I'll put it in ChatGPT. All right, make this less coarse before I get myself in trouble. Like read this, make it a little bit better, I'll send it and then, you know, because things like that.

It's a sanitation tool for you.

Don't get me in trouble.

Like, rewrite this to sound less like a jackass. Yes. That's good.

Or to sound—

yeah, I use it a lot. I actually— funny that you say that. I had not jumped on the bandwagon of paying the, the $20 a month for a long, long, long, long time, since the beginning. And I'm like, I am getting a lot out of this for free because I was never giving it any information. I was using it to, you know, give me tips and tricks and ideas and formulas. It was never me kind of giving it information. And that was really the only reason I figured like that, that's probably what's worth paying for, so you can have a private, you know, so you can have your own private— like the business account allows you to not share your information. And I wasn't quite ready for that. But, uh, funny story, I, I got a, uh, a notification in my accounting system that we'd been paying ChatGPT $20 a month for the last 3 months. And I'm like, whoa, wait a minute, I did— I, I don't remember giving it my credit card. Or like— so I asked my wife and she's like, oh yeah, I started using it because she's a programmer. Um, and she was like, yeah, I'm learning this other language, and I started using it as a way to, um, help me with, you know, like, I give it code and it comes back and tells me what may or may not be wrong with it. So again, a very legitimate use of it to, to literally learn. It's a great learning tool. And so I'm like, well, okay, so she's using it. So then I was like, all right, let's just sign up. And we signed up for the, the business plan, and now that I have it, I'm using it a lot more than before. A lot of the same stuff, but it's a good way to expedite some of the sort of mundane, trivial things that I— that I— it took me a while longer to do than I really wanted to spend on. And it's— if you're gonna ask me what— I got literally, it's 1,000 nits a day. Maybe not 1,000, but like little things, you know, like Oh, make a list or whatever. Now that Apple— have— do you have an Apple iPhone?

Yeah.

Did you— have you— do you have the 16 yet?

Yeah. So with the 16, the last update included the intelligence, but I haven't even played with it yet.

Oh my God, what a difference. I mean, like, basically you're reading a— you're reading an email that is somebody replied to from something you sent them a month ago, and you'd have to normally scan through the past messages. But what this does is it just summarizes the entire thread, and you can tell it to put it into a table, bullet points, whatever. And it's the kind of stuff that I was using ChatGPT for, which is the little, the little things like, right, I want to read all this, summarize it for me, you know? Yeah. And then I can ask it questions. Or so it's—

I have to play with that.

Yeah, you should. It's, it's little tiny tasks that cost you another 2 or 3 minutes to do on your own, but you can save that time. And if you do that 50 times a day, it's a couple hours of saving, and that's worth $20 a month for me.

Oh yeah, same here. And I do use it for like formatting stuff, so it's like, all right, more consumable for people. I'll just type out my raw thoughts and it organizes it. And my wife uses it very similar way. She says she does a lot of Salesforce work And she has some, some, you know, unique circumstances that she runs into. And so she uses Reddit or Salesforce communities a lot to ask questions. But sometimes it's so niche that they're like, she gets 50 different comments and they're all telling her to grab them all and like, okay, put this into— I was like, have you tried ChatGPT? She's like, well, no, I don't even think about it. Well, she pays for it now because it was so helpful that a lot of the stuff on the first solution, it's like, hey, try this and it works. And she's like, Well, then, I mean, that literally saved her hundreds of hours of, of trying to go back and forth and figure this stuff out.

Yeah, it's a neat tool. It's a neat tool. I think of all the tools that have come out in the last 5 years that cost a lot more money, this, this is the absolute best bang for your buck. Like, the $20 a month that I spend, I'm getting more than $20 worth. And I hate to say it, there are other tools that I pay a lot more for that I kind of don't know if I'm really getting that much value for, but I have to keep them because if I lose access to it, I lose like the, you know, the history and all the way. So it's almost like I've been, um, I don't know, kidnapped, right? You know, by this, like, I don't really need it this month, but if I stop paying for it, I lose my history or whatever. Like, can I just get a month off.

Yeah, yeah, that's funny. And it's not even like— you can't even go to Chick-fil-A for $20, or you can't go to Chick-fil-A twice for $20 now. So it's, you know, in the scheme, it's, it's, uh, it's definitely worth it.

I think so too. Well, we were talking about how we don't need tools, but that's a simple one, you know. By the way, I didn't pay for this for a long time, and I was getting great results. Yeah, but what are, what others In your opinion, what other tools are people sort of— let's take the opposite view, right? What tools are people out there kind of desperate to use and turn out to not really be all that necessary? Like, let's just say, what can we get rid of if we're gonna— it's starting a new year, right?

Yeah.

What should we cut this year that we really don't need anymore?

That's a good question. I, I don't know, to be, um, quite frank with you. I know a lot of—

or it doesn't have to be a brand name. I'm just—

I say a lot of orgs are cutting brand name LinkedIn Recruiter and going with other tools like SeekOut or Hireezy, which is fine. Kind of your choice there. But I don't know. Nothing immediately comes to mind of what we shouldn't use. I still think it's fun to again play around and continue to experiment with these things. And hopefully the creators of those tools continue to experiment and come out with new things. But I don't know, what do you think we should cut out?

Um, in it— I like how you just turn this around and put it back on me. But if I— I have thought about this, uh, a lot. And in a perfect world, I've been having some conversations with two clients that are very similar to this. In a perfect world, I would love to get rid of either the ATS or the CRM. I feel like, I feel like there, there was a time, even not that long ago, where CRMs had functionality that ATSs didn't have that made CRMs more attractive to me as a sourcer because of things like sequencing and omnichannel campaigns and things like that. And I really didn't use the applicant tracking system because it was almost like the last— it was like the destination. When, when a candidate was ready to apply, they would go there, and I just lived in the CRM. So if, if I literally were to say, in a perfect world, I would get rid of the ATS, but then that means the CRMs would have to have the ability to convert leads into candidates into requisitions. But I think that having both, even though there are standalone CRMs still that have way better capabilities than, than any ATS when it comes to sequencing and lead nurturing, I would still want to not have to have an ATS. Like, I wish— see, I wish a really good CRM came out and said we're a CRM that you can also manage recs on, you know. Or a really good ATS said, we're an ATS that actually has legitimate CRM. Right now there's some things that are close, but they have, you know, there's still gaps. So that would be my magic wand, would be merge them together so I only have to pay one vendor, right? Like, just that one.

But are any of the big, big players, um, even attempting a CRM? Like, when I think of like a Workday or, uh, Taleo or SuccessFactors, like, are they even attempting to— a CRM solution? Because I know a lot— you can— Jim and others, you can, you know—

yeah, they are. There are, uh, Greenhouse went down the road of, um, as is pretty typical for them, you know, having a pretty robust and open API so you could basically get any best-in-class. So that's how they answered that question. They do have an internal one, but it's a second product and you still have to pay for it separately. So again, what I'm saying is, I, I, in the case of Greenhouse, I wish that the main ATS had CRM capabilities and you didn't have to have a second one, right? Because inside of Greenhouse, it's still two separate databases to, you know, right? Um, Ashby is an ATS that has pretty decent CRM capabilities, but at the same time, it has some CRM functionalities that, that others, that, that best-in-class CRMs have that Ashby doesn't have.

Yeah.

So if all you need is an ATS with some CRM capability, you can do that. If all you need is a CRM with some ATS capability, you can go somewhere else. But there isn't one that does both, and that's the overlap that I think is, is happening, um, in other, in other ways as well, right? Like, it's not just ATS and CRM. Take for example something like um, SeekOut, right? Very good search tool, but their messaging until very recently was not very good. And so now it's gotten a little bit better, but they don't have text messaging, for example. So like, even if you, if you said, okay, I can do an ATS and SeekOut, I still need a texting tool. Now I have 3, right? It's too many. Our stack is getting really big.

Yeah, yeah. But companies want to make money, right? So even if, if that solution does come out there's, there's still— they're either— they're going to charge you in pieces to make the, the price look more attractive, or you're going to look at this gigantic number and be like, whoa, I don't think that's gonna work.

That's what happens.

You may end up spending that much money in the long term, but seeing that one big number is, uh, you know, scares some, some companies.

Except for ATSs that are, you know, in my opinion, ATSs are not necessary. Honestly, the, the ATS system is really just a risk mitigation system. And it's a, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. You know, we, we have so many rules around recruiting that we needed an ATS in order to be able to manage the rules. Now that we have the ATS, we created even more rules. So it's like the system that we created to manage all the rules has created more rules. And so there's so many that most of what an ATS does is really just keep you from getting in trouble with all the rules that are being created.

Yeah, it's not a necessary tool unless, you know, but there are new rules being created by different states, different laws being passed. Yeah, it does. It is a big compliance issue. And if you're a federal contractor, there's even more, you know, that goes into it. So it's—

that's my point. And there's more and more and more, you know, as technology evolves. Okay, so now we have AI-assisted pattern recognition and ranking of candidates. So now there's rules for that. So great, we have a tool that makes our job easier, and now we have another rule, right?

Yeah, right. These are even scared to turn that on if, if what they're using has that capability. They don't even want to turn it on.

It doesn't matter, the rule's still there. Yeah, yeah, it's just like more, you know, is there more and more and more and more rules? Not that I think— I mean, you know, I'm not trying to say get rid of all— I'm not an anarchist trying to get rid of all rules, but I think the CRM is a tool that lets us do our job without so much encumbrance because it doesn't have to be beholden to the same rules that an applicant has to be processed with because they're not applicants, they're, they're contacts. So that's always been the argument for having a separate system, is that the CRM contains people that are not applicants. Yeah, yeah, that's been, you know, do we really need an applicant tracking system unless you're hiring hundreds of people? You know what I'm saying? Like, if you were only hiring, like, how many hires do you guys make on a typical year, ballpark?

Like 2,000. Okay, so we would need like, yeah, but if you're hiring 50 or less or 100 or 20, what You could survive without—

you could live without it. You could put that in a CRM. Yeah, you know, I don't know. And it's just one of them. There's others too. It's, it's almost like, okay, I gotta have SeekOut and Gem and the texting system and the, and the CRM and the ATS. I got 5 to— and LinkedIn. I got 6 tools and none of them talk to each other. I mean, they export and import spreadsheets. Some of them have APIs, but there's not a whole lot of bilateral connectivity between— like, imagine if you could synchronize your Outlook with your LinkedIn, your LinkedIn with your Jamf, your Jamf with your, uh, Greenhouse, and like it would all talk to— wouldn't that be awesome? Yeah. So it's 6 different tools, 6 different paychecks, 6 different, you know, companies.

I want to pay you so many CRM solutions that are a one-way integration. And, and it just for ATS CRM, but nothing feeds back. I'm like, this is, this is so ridiculous because if you create multiple logins for people, they're just not going to do it, right? If they can log into one single source of truth, they'll log into it. But if you're going to make them sign into all these different systems, they just end up not doing it.

Um, and so I think my magic wand right there is make, you know, put it into one. Hey, you know what, you just gave me the solution right there. I don't even care if it's one system, as long as all 5 of them have one login.

Yeah.

And I can launch them from the same place, like, that would be awesome.

Yeah.

There was, uh, uh, shoot, um, one of these like single sign-on companies, like Okta. That's it, Okta. I would love to have like an Okta for recruiting where you can launch, you know, all, all of them. Just go into your dashboard and then you just click the one that you need, just like opening software on on a computer instead of having to like log in. And not just the login part, because you could stay logged in, but also the synchronization side.

Yeah, you know, it also makes it easier though if someone leaves the company. If everything's behind Okta or another single sign-on solution, you can activate their account. Now they can't log into any of those tools, whereas if you got separate logins for all that, you got to go in and disable, you know, login for every—

I had to do that. Yeah, so yeah, well, that's my magic wand, so for what it's worth.

I can't think about the— are you— I don't even know. Are you a big football fan? Georgia fan?

Not a huge football fan, only because I didn't grow up here, you know. So I was never really imbued with the, with the team spirit.

Yeah.

For, for those sports. I never really even watched football until I got to college. And, you know, had to literally— somebody had to translate for me.

That's right. Well, they lost yesterday, but I wanted to at least, you know, represent, um, for, for, uh, you know, Georgia. Um, nonetheless, yeah.

But yeah, but that's the other thing is I'm not exactly from Georgia either. Yeah, I live there, so I should be, right? And I would be if, if I was to pick a team, but honestly, not one of the things like we, you know, my kids and I watch other sports like Olympics and stuff like that that were, um, I guess just I didn't grow up with it. Believe it or not, we had baseball.

I loved it.

I was bigger— baseball was more— you could watch baseball on TV when I was a kid. Yeah, football, soccer, definitely that was our national sport. So, you know, the World Cup and stuff like that, that's a, that's a big deal.

Yeah, it was— baseball was my household, but yeah, now it's, it's football. I did get into Caitlin Clark this year or last year as well. WNBA. So we'll see this year. But I hate paying for TV. Like, we begged for decoupling and then now we have like 20 different subscriptions that we have to pay for.

Now we're begging for recoupling. Yeah, right. Yeah. Same thing happened. Well, maybe for a different topic.

Yeah.

So, yeah, that's been fun. Thanks for staying a little extra and doing the overtime with me.

Absolutely, absolutely. I appreciate you having me here. Enjoy the snow, Georgia. I mean, there's multiple reports the 10th, a week from now, we could get a little bit of snow, like 12 inches at one point. Now it's like half an inch. I don't know, hopefully we'll get at least a dusting. So I can get some pretty, you know—

well, I can't let you go without asking the one question that I ask everybody on the show, and that is, who should be our next guest?

That's a good question. Because you've had so many guests.

Somebody that you would like to see on the show doesn't mean that they're going to accept. But if I get a name from everybody and a few of them, you know, say yes, then I can keep the show going. So who would you love to see on the show? And believe me, go high. Like I had somebody recommend someone who was on the Wall Street Journal top 10 authors list, and they actually agreed to be on the show.

That, um, well, I'd say Caitlin Clark, but that's probably not, not feasible, um, for that.

It's relevant to recruiting.

Yeah, within, uh, the recruiting world. Um, see, you've had Ronnie, I'm sure. I know you have Brian, he's on the intro. Uh, man, I would say, uh, Jackie Wavra, Joey Justuli, uh, or Dolph Augustus.

Man, I am going to drop all three names into LinkedIn and say, Seth said you got to come on the show, or you can do an intro for me if you want.

Yeah, I can.

But, uh, that'd be great. Yeah, appreciate it. Hey, one out of three will, will say yes, right?

Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, um, absolutely.

If anybody's out there you want to be on the show, just hit me. You know how to find me. It's not like I'm hidden. But, uh, man, thanks a lot, Seth, for being on here. I'll see you when I'm back in Atlanta. Happy New Year 2025! This year is going to be much better than last year, I promise. Um, I hope anyway.

So awesome. Everyone, thank you, Seth.

See everybody on the next one. Be kind to yourselves. Bye-bye.