Suzy Tonini | Competitive Intelligence | Shally's Alley

Hey everybody, happy June! It is Friday, June 7th, and you are live on Shally's Alley. Woohoo! I need party streamers or something. Ah, well, on with me today we have a very special, very special guest and longtime friend, um, from, from way back in the day. Way back, uh, In fact, I'm gonna embarrass you with a little story. Susie is one of the few people that have actually come to my house. And a long, long time ago, I had just— my daughter had just been born, and Susie came by and brought a gift for my daughter that was a wiry-looking little black poodle kind of stuffed animal, but it was called the Webkinz. and it was the first internet experience for my kid because I had this puppy that had a login code to an online club where the Webkinz can play together with other Webkinz and stuff like that. So I, I want to say she was like maybe 3 or something, um, and like literally you are responsible for my daughter getting on the internet. It's all your fault.

That's crazy.

Went downhill from there.

She's probably old now.

I mean, yeah, she's, uh, she's 16, about to go, about to go 17 this, uh, December.

So yeah, well, I, I remember when you lived in Arizona.

Yep, that's how long we've known each other. Yeah, yeah, that was, uh, '98, '99, 2000.

Yeah, around there. For sure.

So yeah, we've been around the block a little bit, been around the block for a little bit. But, uh, the reason that I wanted to bring on the show, um, today— not that, you know, of course we're, we're longtime friends, um, but folks might be wondering, well, what, you know, what's the, what's the topic of the day? Well, the topic of the day is career transition. So here's the deal, uh, Susie used to be— well, still is, I guess— um, a really good sourcer. And back in the day, you know, we're talking about, like, as we just discussed, we're talking about 2000, right? So 24, 25 years ago, maybe even 26 years ago, when the internet was like a little baby and just had diapers, and somebody had just plugged in the, the internet and put fresh batteries in it or whatever. Um, and since then, uh, Susie and I's career kind of just evolved into this, you know, internet sleuthing, find anyone online. And throughout the years, we both developed an affinity for something that is nowadays called competitive intelligence. Even so much as to say, I don't know about you, but I joined SCIP, the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals.

I did for a while.

Yeah, me too. Exactly. I was a member of SCIP for a while and Anyway, getting around to the point, Susie actually made a full-on career transition. So has essentially gone into computer competitive intelligence or internet competitive intelligence, or I guess you also do telephone competitive intelligence, but the whole thing? No, just internet? Okay. So just internet competitive intelligence. So this is a pretty big career move. And I just wanted to have you on the show to, to explore for those of you that are out there that, you know, maybe you've been in sourcing for a little while and you're like, this isn't for me, but I want to use these skills. Or maybe you're just having a really tough time finding a job in this market and, you know, you want to apply yourself to something else. Competitive intelligence is probably the closest role to sourcing that you can have in a corporate entity. And most people have no idea what it is. So I wanted you to kind of, you know, explain a little bit about what competitive intelligence is today and, um, how you got into it. I mean, I know you and I were both into it because we were sourcing and it was a way to learn for sourcing, but you decided to actually just jump ship. So kind of how that whole thing happened. So why don't we start with for folks that have no idea what it is, what is competitive intelligence?

So competitive intelligence within a company normally actually falls under marketing and product marketing. So you are assisting teams, the field, the sales, the marketing team. I don't really interact with talent acquisition anymore, to be honest. Right. Um, so yeah, so I am like tasked with finding out like as soon as possible, um, what our competitors are up to, what are their new product releases, what are they, you know, where are they, you know, what, where are they, um, placing themselves online. And so I go back to the, to my team and, and provide this information. And so they that the product management, project management, and engineering teams can actually make some decisions around things that I find. I mean, I'm not like the person that influences like a new product, but I do help in giving, shining a light on what other companies are doing, which by the way, I have two major competitors doing, um, their summits, their annual summits, one this week and one next week.

Right now?

Yeah. So I am tracking everything that's being announced, um, what are the analysts saying, um, also going through all the LinkedIn updates and Twitter updates and Reddit threads and, um, just to understand, you know, maybe this company— I'm not going to name them, but, uh, right, right, right, saying the greatest things about their products, where on the other side, you know, reality hits under Hacker News, or as I said, Reddit, and people are actually saying, well, no, but this, you know, this is fluff or whatever. So I take all that, and, and it's a lot, so you have to distill it, and then, you know, in a presentable format, um, back to whoever's requesting that. And, and I get requests from I mean, from the CEO down to engineering. And, um, again, no HR. I don't even interact with them anymore. So it's really cool. I love it.

It's kind of like, uh, in a way it is the same thing as sourcing because you're trying to identify who does what, where, at what companies, and, um, you know, who they are. And, and now you're essentially doing what it is, right, that they do. And it's not so much as the who, but the what they're doing, what they're about to do. So you can kind of get ahead. So competitive intelligence is a— and I want to emphasize one thing here. To you and I, it is natural. It comes organically. But to a lot of people out there, this may be an alien environment. I want to emphasize that this is all 100% ethical and above board. It is a legitimate, you know, there's, there's, there's this confusion about corporate espionage or whatever. So what, whatever you see in the movies, it's not that. This is a legitimate, essentially a research job that, um, you know, sometimes folks come into this field from what, like library sciences or marketing or business intelligence, BI, marketing intelligence, and then they evolve into this role that's more proactive as opposed to reactive. It's not finding out what happened, but like hopefully trying to, you know, get ahead of it, right?

Exactly.

So it's very similar to what we— what I still do and what you used to do with people, but it's a completely different market, different environment, right? And probably 80, 90% of the information is actually available to practically anyone. It's just a matter of finding it, how to finding it. And as you said, synthesizing it and make it, putting it together into something that actually tells a story. But is there a component of what you do that is not, let's just say, openly available, like on the internet? Is there anything that you do where you where you gather information from, let's say, paid sources that you have access to that, you know, that you legally and ethically have access to, but we don't? Or—

yes, well, there is— we, we do use a paid tool. It's actually called, um, Crayon. Very, very cool tool. They pull in all the feeds available, and then there's a whole bunch of other stuff you can do in there, like track— and I have to create battle cards as well. That's another thing that's part of my job description. So where do we win? Where do we lose? When do we walk away? What are the objections? You know, and all that. So CRAN is really cool because it, um, when you do these battle cards, they're live and they, they sit in Salesforce, which is where the salespeople live. Um, so that's really cool. And then there's win-loss analysis. You know, you go around again, I interact a lot with salespeople, with sales, right? They're cool. They're, they're fun.

And they're telling you what, what went down with the client meeting. And, you know, if they got the deal, what was the turning point? If they didn't get the deal, what was the objection? Things like that.

You got it. Yeah. That's part of the job. So, um, so yeah, Crayon is a paid tool. It's been really good.

Crayon would be like what we used to do with our CRM where we like put all the—

except it seems like it has analytics and visualization and Yeah, it actually shows you who's actually read and downloaded the battle cards and if they want a deal. So that's really cool, right? To connect the dots.

We should do that in sourcing. I know, right? And let's interview the candidate and if they got the hire— hello! You would think it'd be in the ATS, but no, it's not, right? Yes. Do you even remember ATSs? You're probably— oh, I'm so glad I'm done with that part of the world.

Oh my God. Yeah, um, not even gonna go there, but By the way, I didn't just like fall into competitive intelligence from sourcing. So I've been at Cloudera for now 8+ years. So I was on board before it was a public company and then became public, then it merged with Hortonworks, and then it was sold, and then we went private again. So I've seen a whole bunch of stuff going on, layoffs, etc. Initially, when I wanted to get out of talent acquisition was I saw something called the Innovation Accelerator that was being started at Cloudera. I'm like, what the heck is that? That sounds awesome. And so I found the person who is heading this endeavor. And he brought me in as a program manager, which I had never done program management.

Right, right.

I just said, listen, these are the things I know how to do.

And he goes, okay, that sounds like a program manager. And really, that's a program. Yeah.

So for a whole year, I was totally embedded with engineers, man. I was like doing all the Scrum calls, yeah, all that stuff, which I had never done before. So it's like you have to kind of like, um, you know, kind of jump in. And for sure, I had, uh, what is that, uh, term again? Imposter syndrome.

Oh yeah, I still have it today.

I still get it. But, you know, um, with me, and I'm sure with a lot of sources, because first thing you gotta have is curiosity and then perseverance, right?

So, and those are like literally number one and number two skills for sourcing. Yeah.

And so if I couldn't, like, if I didn't know the answer, here's another thing: you peel back the Slack channels, or just Slack in general, is just like my favorite thing in a company because you get to interact with people you would never be able to interact with. And so I would actually— the way I got sort of elevated the visibility outside of HR, because it's still siloed, man. I mean, I don't know a company that's not.

That was—

I would just post some, you know, updates, competitive intelligence updates, because that's what I— that's just me. And so all these people kind of saw me interact and contribute back to Cloudera. And so So that's how I was able to really connect with a lot of folks if I needed help. And then just FYI, life is not easy sometimes. December of 2022, my whole engineering team got laid off along with a whole bunch of other folks at Cloudera. It had never happened in such a big number. It was 400 people out of 3,000.

A lot. Yeah. And it was the team you were embedded with.

Yeah, the whole team. The whole team. And by the way, that team had been an acquisition. So, you know, oh my, I know, whiplash. Yeah, totally. So yeah, so I had that whole period of looking for jobs, you know, and submitting X amount of jobs for the unemployment department. But I was also, thankfully, I'm still pursuing a Master's of Science in Information Management at University of Washington. So that kept me busy that way. And then one day in July, the competitive intelligence director at Cloudera kind of remembered me, and he says, I have an opening because one of my team is moving on to another team. One of my team members is going on to another team. Would you be interested? I'm like, yeah. So that's how I got back into Cloudera after being about 8 months, not, not with Qatar. So he had— so here's, that's like, here's the dots, right? The program management position, the manager decided, I have faith in you, I think you can do it. Same with my competitive intelligence director. He goes, I know you've never really done this professionally, but I think you could do it. And so this is key. In finding a role.

Yeah, in changing careers is finding someone that believes in you.

Believes in— exactly.

But in both of those cases, Susie, isn't it true that you had a core skill or a core competency that was necessary in these jobs? Sure, it wasn't your job title, it wasn't your job description, but there was something that you knew how to do that you developed as a sorcerer that became pivotal in these roles, even though it's— I, I get completely different role, but it's almost like if you, if you learn, if you learn something like mechanical skills really well by deconstructing diesel engines and you know engine parts really well, you can take that to some other kind of mechanical engineering engine, right? So what was that? What was your What was that essential skill that sourcing, um, produced for you, or that you developed for yourself in sourcing, that then made this essentially possible?

Well, besides the curiosity and the perseverance, um, I guess—

yeah, but that was already there. That wasn't sourcing.

I guess, um, uh, better— so Understanding processes, being super organized. And then, and being cross-collaborative. I mean, just, if you're, if you just hide in your little area, and it's not going to help your career. I mean, literally, if you don't—

really interesting. I mean, I get it. So good at process, definitely. So one thing I've been, you know, all my years doing this, as close to as many as yours. One thing I've always thought was very different between sourcing and recruiting, and part of why I started calling it out as a separate role, you know, back in the, um, late '90s and early teens, is because recruiting is very systemic or systems-driven. There's, there's a required rigidity in the process of following a specified prescribed sequence, you know, application, background check, interview, offer. It, you know, so there's— there you have to follow this system for to protect yourself and your company from risk, to make sure that everybody is treated with, you know, fairness and equality and all these other things that are necessary. But sourcing doesn't conform to that. In fact, I would say sourcing is the opposite in that there really is no formula or system to sourcing. You can't apply the same sourcing technique each time to every job. There's all these differences. So being, um, being able to kind of experiment and iterate with processes is something that sounds like it's key to competitive intelligence. You may not always be able to go to the same places, or, you know, and, and the other thing that you just said is the, um, organization. So again, with sourcing, you know, you have so many different places that you go, right? I, for one, I, I use Evernote and, uh, and OneNote. And I've been, I've been— the reason, by the way, is because some companies that I've worked with do not allow you to use Evernote, and so I have to use OneNote. So it's, it's an environmental thing. Um, but either way, you know, literally they're transferable. And those are my— that's, that's where I store all my information. It used to be probably the same with you, maybe spreadsheets, you know, like way back in the day. But that's so— you can't— there's so many sources, there's so much information. So I think what you just said is really key. Aside from the ability to find information and the curiosity and the pers— you know, the, the perseverance, there's this organization skill And there's this, uh, ability to flex your workflow that is inherent in sourcing that doesn't come from before. That's something you learn on the job. Yeah, those two things. If you want to get good at it, you have to figure out where did you go, where were— what worked, what didn't work, where are all the different sources so you can go back to them. You can't just randomly, you know, throw darts at the internet and eventually, you know, find something and then forget about it and do it all over again. You have to organize it and catalog it and all that. That's interesting.

And not only that, it's like, for example, we have a new marketing leadership team, so they are constantly like, we need a response to this, right? That just happened 5 minutes ago, so you got to be on it. Like, and go find out, like, go find it now. Come back like at the end of the day. That's it. You have to be like, okay, again, organized time management really helps. Well, in any role. Yeah.

But I think in this case it's the discernment, right? Like, how easy is it for— well, this is— I've been very diligent about a disciplined approach to distractions, right? You've probably heard me talk about my sourcing blocks. Um, it's— it— I borrowed it from a time management class that I took. It was like the only thing I took out of that time management class, which was the, um, Pomodoro Technique, which comes from the Pareto Principle. Bottom line is, it's, you know, you set up your, your blocks in 25-minute sets and you focus your activity. But, you know, the reason I did that is because somewhere along about a third of the way into my career I found myself— I'm sitting at my desk, fully caffeinated, well-rested, and, you know, middle of the morning, uh, not after a big meal or anything like that. I'm just sitting there at my desk after, you know, a couple of hours of working, and I pass out. I just fall asleep. I'm like— and I'm like, what? Wait a minute. Like, I'm interested in this, I, I'm excited about this, I want to do this, but I'm bored. And I thought to myself, what am I going to do now? Now. Like, I find no challenge in this. I want to do it and I'm interested. So I— this, this sourcing set thing came out of my experimentation with other areas that I might perhaps bring into sourcing. And what happened was I— it awakened this knowledge that if you overfocus on the same thing for too long, yeah, it doesn't matter how attentive and interested and awake and you are, you zone out. And that zoning out is what literally put me to sleep. So I discovered this systemic approach to— right, and now I can do 8 25-minute sets throughout the day and get a lot done. And in between, I have, you know, I switch tasks. So the key is you don't switch tasks during that 25 minutes Right? So they tell you, okay, uh, X, Y, and Z company just announced that they were going to do this. Susie, go figure out where it's happening, who's doing it, you know, what the product line is going to be like, what are the features, etc. And you got the rest of the day. Well, if you sat in front of your computer and stared at it for 6 hours doing the same thing, you would lose track of time and you wouldn't be able to do it. But I bet if you sit there and you focus for 20, 30 minutes and go, I'm going to go dig into this, then you'll get an outcome get a cup of tea or check your email or return a call, then come back and focus on that. And that, that's— to me, that was what woke me up. It made me realize I can go, I can go 12, 14, 20, 30 hours straight if I do sourcing sets, but I can't go 4 hours straight if I'm sitting there doing the same thing over and over again.

I am not that organized, but it's the concept, right?

Like, you have these kind of chunks, you chunkify Yes, you chunkify your time.

Yeah, yeah.

Is that, is that also part of— and I'm, and I'm sure you have, like, you can't disclose it, I'm sure you have a system where you're like, okay, in order to get this information, I must first, like in sourcing, I must first A, digest the funnel. Like, okay, where are these people? What— first of all, first of all, what does the client man want? What does the hiring manager really want? Then where are these people? And then like, how do I find them? And then, okay, there's 3 places, I'm gonna go here, and get some, and I'm gonna go here, and then I'm gonna put it all into a place to dedupe, and then I'm gonna do the outreach. So like, I've got— there is a system to it.

There is, yes.

What is that for competitive intelligence? Is it first I read the, the news feed, or is it first I go to— so like, what's that like?

It's not like that. It is ad hoc as it gets, which I have different every time. Oh yeah, absolutely.

So you have to be organized.

You have to, otherwise, yeah, otherwise, where do you put it all? Exactly. So again, I'm not like, okay, well, this request, I know exactly, you know, I just, it just comes to me, you know, naturally.

So I don't know, there's a creativity aspect to it.

It is. Yes. And by the way, I also, when I joined Cloudera, I became a talent researcher. They actually created that role for me after a year that I was a sourcer, because they saw my research skills. They really liked that. And then I became a talent branding person in addition to talent research. So the fact that— essentially it is marketing, exactly. But the fact that these people, you know, put faith into my various skills, because I don't have— I have a lot of, you know, different skills, that was also key, you know. And I can't say that that's going to happen everywhere, right? So Um, but yeah, no, this is— I like the— it's very fast-paced. Um, you, you have to tell— be able to tell a story to the C-level in very condensed.

Oh, so that's another skill you just pointed to. So it's the, the synthesis is one part of it, like what did I get from this, but that's not the same as what you just said. The synthesis and understanding what the meaning of it is, is A, B is translating that to the C-suite. And how did you learn that? Because that, I know that doesn't come with— I, I've learned that over the years as a senior consultant going in because the CHRO and the VP of HR hired me to do something, and I've had to like literally do or die. But that's not something that comes with sourcing. How did you learn that skill, the, the interpretation to C-suite skill?

You know, that's a good question. My, my studies right now are giving me a lot of, um, really good—

okay, so that's master's in information management. Information management. So is that similar to library sciences?

No, because for example, my last class was a business intelligence class, so I got to play around with Cognos and Power BI and Tableau and things like that. So But it's similar, but not really. I was thinking of an MLS, and then I'm like, well, maybe, maybe get into information management, which I love because I love information and managing it is a good thing.

So information management is more corporate versus academic, or—

yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. So, okay, where were we at?

Um, well, we were at the presentations.

Yeah, yeah. You know, being at Cloudera has been extremely valuable to my career, just learning so many things. Because they— it's a small company, 3,000 people. So it's kind of scrappy, which I love. It's like, all right, go ahead, do this. And you have to figure it out.

You still have that flexibility. Yeah. Autonomy, flexibility.

Yeah, yeah. That's another big plus, like, you know, treating people like adults is Really nice.

Trust me. Yeah, you know, you, you get to do that to a certain degree, you know. Um, so I've done a lot of work for the three-letter agencies, right? The larger federal organizations. And I've done quite a, quite a bit with, um, you know, projects that are, that are secret, top secret, things like that. I myself don't have a clearance, but you don't need to for these projects because what we're doing is gathering essentially open source information. So what we're finding isn't secret. What they do with it is what's secret, but not what we're finding. And based on what you just said, it kind of makes me think, so there's this level of, there's this level of maturity when you work with a startup, and I mean like early stage, first 5 years before 1,000, you know?

Yeah.

Like when I was at Google, it was the pre-IPO, it was a startup. There's a rapid iteration, there's a flexibility, there's an autonomy. I mean, you know, I remember being given a blank check quite literally, like you buy whatever you need. Then you go to work for a mature organization like Microsoft where there's structure and there's mentorship, the plan of, you know, we're actually going to give you a senior member of another team to be your your guide in the organization and the culture and all that. Um, and you don't— you lose that, that immediate flexibility because everything is now you have to go through approvals and— right. And I had a budget, but I still had— there was, you know, at Google I had no budget. It was just spend whatever, buy whatever you want. At Microsoft, it's here's your budget, but you can only use it for this, not that, right? And so there was like all these restraints. And the level of maturity increased. There was a level of maturity in an, in a more established organization where certain childish behaviors were really not tolerated. And then I went into and worked with the government, and that level of maturity, it doubled again. Yeah, we're working in these environments that the accountability and responsibility, when they put something on your plate there's no, are we going to check up and make sure that Shelly got his job done? There's, there's an, there's an assumption you're going to get it done.

Yeah, right. That's why they hire us.

Yeah. Whereas like, you know, in the midsize large companies, there's almost like a little bit of micromanagement.

Yeah.

You know, did you meet your quota? Did you meet your deadline? Did you meet— there's always, you know, and in the small company, there's zero accountability because it's all about the end result. So it's kind of bizarre how the further you get into it— let's just say government is a very large organization, you know, probably the largest employer. I have no idea if that's Walmart or the federal government, probably one or the other. But the further you get into these large organizations, the more the expectation is that you're going to be self-directed, self-sustaining, and, um, not going to be childish.

Correct.

Do you feel like There's a— you're in the middle there, right? So it's an established company, but it's not a Microsoft. Do you feel like there's, there's definitely a level of maturity that you need to attain professionally in order to be in competitive intelligence? Like, I don't want to say, is this a job for old people? Because that's not what I mean. But I want to say, you know, is this a job for someone who's had, who's had some business experience, a variety of job titles? Is Or could you be a sourcer for 5 years out of college and then go into competitive intelligence? I say no. I say it's a little bit more mature.

Oh no, I say yes, you can.

Okay.

Yeah, I mean, okay, one of the team members that has now left, um, he came in, he came in straight out of college into competitive intelligence. Yeah.

And, and it's not like sourcing, it's not something that's taught in school. I mean, nobody goes to school for competitive intelligence, right?

So if you have a good manager who's going to help you out, okay, I think it's just that mindset, right? You need—

so you do need the maturity, but it doesn't come with age is what you're saying?

No, no, absolutely not. I mean, I happen to be, uh, have been around the block a while, but, um, that's not our qualification.

No, I'm just wondering, I'm just exploring this with you because I feel like To be a really good sourcer, there's, there's this fallacy out there, uh, not to drag you back into sourcing, but there's this fallacy out there that, that people are sourcers first and then they become recruiters. Like, a sourcer is a recruiter that wants to grow up, you know, to be a recruiter. That's so incorrect in, in my opinion. To be a good sourcer, you, you have to have been a recruiter or have had experience and exposure to recruiting and know the full life cycle and know that side of the business. And prefer the sourcing side, right? It's, it's a calling, it's a, it's an inherent skill set, it's a core competency, whatever you want to call it, but it drives you into that side of the equation. With competitive intelligence, that curiosity and perseverance, is, is it also similar? Like, it's, um, you almost have to have this appetite for knowledge. Yes, beyond curiosity, beyond how does How does this work? Because curiosity, you could have it in engineering. How does this machine work? Let me take it apart.

Right. That's why I call myself an information monger. I can't get enough information.

Yeah, I like that.

Yeah. I mean, I'm just so curious. I'm a snooper.

You get your fishmongers, you got your cheese mongers, and you got your information mongers.

Yeah, and that's— yeah, that's, it's interesting. Um, so it really is. I think Glenn Guttmacher and myself, we posted, uh, something on LinkedIn. It was really cool. It was, what do sourcers do besides sourcing? Like, how do they use their skills? I don't know if you've seen that. It was a few years back. Oh yeah, yeah, we compiled this whole list of— yeah, I do that, I do forensic, I don't know. I mean, some interesting stuff with was being listed. So those people, they'd be great in competitive intelligence because they're thinking outside the box. They're doing other things. They're not just, I'm sourcer, period.

I gotta find this. Yeah, they're pulling the thread and— yeah, yeah, or peeling back the onion or whatever analogy you want to use.

Okay, very well said, Sally. Sourcer needs a lot of intelligence about the requirements and the company. Okay, just looking at the comments.

Ah, let me post that up here. Yeah, I wanted to go in just slightly different direction if you have a few more minutes for, for, for our audience. So we kind of know how you got there, we kind of know this is a very viable transition skill, and, um, you know, if you're, if you're interested in it, in pursuing, if you, if you want to leave the TA world behind, so We got to that point, but now we're there. What can we go— bring me backwards. What can we learn from competitive intelligence? What does competitive intelligence have that sourcing should know? Like, are there any— I'm just gonna throw it out there. Are there any search engines that you use that are different than ours? Are there any aside from Creon, which sounds like a very fancy piece of software. What, what else, what have you learned in competitive intelligence that you, in the back of your mind, you're like, wow, would have been really nice if I had this when I was a sorcerer?

Yeah, besides crayon.

Um, yeah, besides crayon.

I think you guys, sorcerers, man, you have all the tools. I don't even know what's going on there anymore, to be honest. So, um, wait, so one of the things that I did when I was at Deloitte when there was a lull right before 2008 and we're getting fired and nobody's hiring. I just went out there and on my own— again, initiative is another good one.

Yeah, right.

Just kind of under the radar. Well, not only did I, did I start our Yammer network at Deloitte without really asking permission, but then it became like, you know, they became their— Deloitte became Yammer's largest customer because I started with recruiters and sourcers. Let's share information. Who's laying off? You know, all these things, right? And then it snowballed into the whole company. And so that— I got really interested in who's laying off, like all the companies that are laying off, and, and kind of compiling and doing these things, um, you know, bring back the, the results of companies that are laying off. Everybody's interested in that. Not these days, I don't think, but back in the day, um, you know, those were people that you would go and try to source, right? So, um, so yeah, again, this— what's interesting here is I'm working under marketing, which is where I should have been my whole life, I think, because I have been in marketing before.

Okay.

Yeah, um, well, talent branding was marketing. I really enjoyed that. And then, um, and then product marketing is really cool because you get to talk, you get to interact with the engineers who are actually developing the products, and then the product managers and the product marketers, and then see it all tie together into a new release that gets announced, that gets a new customer. Because that's what's cool, is you're somehow contributing to— I'm maybe not ROI, but, um, possibly, you know, new customers are always good, right? Or retaining customers. So That's the part I like the most is being able to interact with all these different groups. And being under marketing, which is way more fun than people in HR, I have to tell you. Sourcers aside, sourcers are cool.

But that's the transition skill that we were talking about. So definitely can be applied. You know, we do touch, we do touch marketing. Insourcing in some ways, especially with the advent of social media and the way that sort of like, you know, used to be people would call social media something separate or different. Nowadays, it's just media, you know, it's kind of all blended together. So there's not like, you know, you don't have like a social media sourcer, specifically, right?

Right. Right.

Now, just part of the, you know, it's kind of all blended into Internet, pretty much.

Um, I wanted to ask you, what is going on in the sourcing world these days? Because I don't know, LinkedIn depresses me every day I go in there.

It's like, I'm kidding. Yeah, so, uh, that's depressing. It's depressing. It is definitely, um, people have become in our industry, they have become more addicted to LinkedIn than they ever were to like Monster or CareerBuilder.

Oh, yeah.

Much more. And so, and all the downside that we saw as, as that evolved with, you know, the dependence on Monster and CareerBuilder is happening, you know, 10 times over. So much so that people have learned to— in our industry, they have learned to lie to themselves about the results and the outcomes in order to justify their addiction. Um, so it's kind of like, you know, it's kind of like the meth addict using the fact that they have superhuman skills when they're high on meth as an excuse for being high on meth. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, like, well, you know, it's not really an addiction because I, I feel great and I can do so much when I'm you know, it's bizarre. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. And we've begun a reversal. People are leaving LinkedIn and more and more people are not even on LinkedIn or have abandoned their profiles and things like that. So, those that are kind of addicted to trolling LinkedIn, especially finding the high-profile people that have, you know, complete profiles and come up in search results, and they're being hit up by every recruiter. It's now become like, if I can't find them on LinkedIn, then they don't exist.

Yeah, right.

Which I have to say, between you and me and our audience of thousands of people, is really good for me because I get brought in as an, as a consultant very frequently, because they've been paying LinkedIn millions of dollars for years, and they are not getting results.

Yeah.

And they bring me in and go, what's wrong? Why can't we— can you come in and help us figure out where to find these people? Uh, and it's literally anything but LinkedIn. So I, I don't wanna seem like I'm complaining cuz it keeps me, it keeps me well employed and keeps me, you know, definitely relevant. But it is, it's detrimental to, it's, it's, it's, what's the word? I'm, looking for. Like when you atrophy—

it's atrophy, atrophy.

Yeah, it's atrophy. Recruiters and sourcers are at their, their, their search muscles are atrophied because all they do is go to linkedin.com, type a keyword, and hit enter. And unfortunately, all these other tools that are out there, there's lots of them, okay, like you said, um, that are social aggregators, they also use LinkedIn data. And so even if you're like, well, I don't use LinkedIn, I use blank, guess what? They use LinkedIn. So, you know, we seem to somehow have forgotten as an industry that LinkedIn's number one source of traffic is Google, right?

That's right. For sure.

So for some reason, we just sort of like don't use Google anymore. As an industry, which is, you know, which is kind of unfortunate. It's— I don't know if you remember, I used this analogy when I went— you were at the Spy Museum when we did that presentation. No, I think I used this analogy there, um, and it, it really resonates today. It's the exact same thing but just shifted. So I used to talk about how Google would claim— remember, I used to work at Google. Yeah, you know, Google would claim that they sold you your car. Let me explain why. They would say that you went on Google and you typed in, uh, Mercedes-Benz, or what, I don't know what your favorite car is, whatever, uh, Tesla, or whatever your favorite car, and then they served you an ad or information that led you to click on that dealership, and then you went to that dealership and you bought that car. Google would take— they would claim that they sold you that car, that the only reason you went to that dealership and bought a Mercedes is because you used Google, right? But what they don't say, which is the actual truth of this, is that it— you, you bought that Mercedes or you bought that Tesla for some other reason, and that reason may vary. It could be, for example, if you're driven by, uh, staying, you know, keeping up with the Joneses, right? You might want to buy the car your neighbor has. So you already knew you wanted a Mercedes, you just went to Google to find the nearest dealership. So you didn't buy the Mercedes because of Google, you just use Google as you would have used the Yellow Pages. It's It's the same thing. You would have flipped to the Yellow Pages and got, you know, or maybe you saw an ad on TV, in which case the TV sold you Mercedes, right? So your neighbor sold you Mercedes, the TV, your best friend, your mentor, someone else sold you the Mercedes, and Google was just the, the way that you found the dealership. But they would go to the dealership and say, if you don't advertise on Google, you won't get any customers because we're the reason that you sell cars. Now apply that to everything else in the world, right? Yeah, that's it. Well, all the things that Google allows you to advertise on, I want you to— I know this is going to be controversial, I might catch a lot of slack for this, but I want you to fast forward from this was what Google was saying. You bought that car because you went on Google and we sold you that car. LinkedIn is doing the same thing with candidates. Just think about that for a minute. You hired that candidate because LinkedIn sold you that candidate.

LinkedIn Recruiter.

LinkedIn, period. Doesn't matter, recruiter or whatever. Yeah. LinkedIn will claim that your hires came from LinkedIn when the reality is very different. They— and I'm not saying, look, I'm— you may as well have gone to Google and researched every car and then decided to go get a Mercedes and maybe Google did sell you that car, but it didn't always sell you that car. In recruiting, you may have actually gone on LinkedIn and searched for jobs and found that job and LinkedIn helped you get that job. But the reality is that a lot of times someone wants to work for your company, they go on LinkedIn to find you or you literally are sending them to LinkedIn in order to apply for the job. So they found your website. Think about this. They found your website, they landed on your careers page, and it says log in with LinkedIn. So you never ever went to LinkedIn until you actually applied for the job. Then you went to LinkedIn, and now your application is through LinkedIn. LinkedIn says they placed that person, just like Google says they sold that car. Yeah, so it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. So people say Well, geez, we'd be dead in the water without LinkedIn. Just like dealerships would say, we couldn't exist if we didn't advertise on Google. Many of these candidates would have applied for the job if it was something else. You know, they would have found your company. They would have been referred. How many, uh, you know this percentage of people that get referred into an organization sometimes is upwards of 40%. That didn't come from LinkedIn.

No.

Sure, they might have hopped on LinkedIn to research your company, but that's not why they got the job. So, We've essentially gotten so lazy that we depend on the last point of entry as if it was the point of discovery. In other words, yeah, that's the last place they visited before they applied for the job, therefore that's where the people are coming from. And so the analogy is it's as if you're just lifting a rock and there's your candidate, right? Oh, I found another candidate. Oh, look, another candidate. Oh, look, another candidate. And someday what's going to happen is you're going to lift that rock and there's no candidate, and you're— these people are going to say, we're out of candidates.

Yeah.

Not realizing that those people that are under the rock, they were behind the rock waiting in line for the rock to come up so they can step forward. They were never under the rock, right? That's just the door that they used to get through. So one day you lift up the rock and the people are gone because they went to another rock or various other rocks or whatever, and we don't know where they go. Because we are so blind as an industry right now depending on that one source. Imagine if all competitive intelligence for all organizations was in one place.

No way. Yeah, that would suck.

Well, first of all, it doesn't— just like all talent is not on LinkedIn, right? You can't depend on LinkedIn for competitive intelligence. It's not the only place that you'll ever get competitive intelligence from. So that's what's happening with sourcing is it's actually kind of going backwards.

Ah, that's a shame.

More and more dependent on the single source, even though we think we're going to these 10 other really cool tools, right? They still are depending on LinkedIn. The other thing that's happening is there's definitely a push towards automation.

Yeah.

Where I think that was, that was really out of reach not that long ago. Automation was— I was talking about Microsoft Power Automate, 5 years ago, or I don't know exactly, but I've been talking about automation for years. It just was out of reach of most people because you needed a little bit of technical knowledge. You need to know how some JavaScript or how to inspect the web page's code and things like that. But yeah, now the automation is so much easier to use that, um, you don't have to have that. First of all, you don't have to invest the time to learn that and have that technical aptitude. So automation is making our job easier. Unfortunately, we're still dependent on LinkedIn. So if we could solve that problem, then the automation would be a much bigger advantage.

So why was it that like, 2 years ago, sourcers and recruiters, I mean, were hot, hot, hot, right? I was getting pinged left and right. Everybody was. Now, I don't see any sourcer roles opening or You know what I'm saying? What's up with that? Is it because everybody's not hiring and they don't need the sourcer who they think is maybe expendable?

I don't know. There's a— there's an economic principle at play here that is similar to, um, a seesaw or an accordion. You have an expansion and contraction of the industry, um, and, you know, I don't even know why I'm telling you this. You know this from competitive intelligence. There's always an expansion and traction. We— because of COVID there was so much stopping of hiring. Hiring slowed down and was, was blocked, and positions got put on hold, and the, the pressure built up on the back of the, of the dam holding back that flood, right? And after COVID's— after COVID was sort of— I don't want to say solved, but, you know, people started feeling better about being able to go out, and all of a sudden companies wanted to go back to hiring, instead of doing the correct thing, which is to plan appropriately, they— and iterate— what they did is they knocked down the entire damn wall and the flood came out, and they opened every position that had been on hold for 2 years all at once.

Yeah, right.

So they were not hiring as, as they should. I mean, they were hiring a little bit, but not as much as they should. They stopped all hiring, it backed up, Then they opened all hiring. And now you had to, in order to do that, you had to hire more recruiters. And so just as they made the mistake of not iterating or not titrating those hires, they also made the mistake of hiring a bunch of recruiters. And some organizations are more to blame than others where they hired, I want to say, thousands, not hundreds, thousands of people with zero experience to go in and become quote unquote sourcers. But all those people were doing was following a very prescribed formula of go here, do this, and then do that. So they were essentially low-level administrative workers getting paid, you know, close to minimum wage to quote-unquote source the data that had piled up. And they had all these applicants. And so now you have these companies with 1,000 sourcers that are calling themselves sourcers, and they're paying them you know, pretty decent wages. And then these very same companies start collapsing because of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. And that's not something that people talk about. The whole Silicon Valley Bank collapse, even though they try to keep it hush-hush, other banks collapsed. We're seeing some other banks collapsing now. There was news about— you saw the news about the 25 banks that are on the verge of collapsing. And all of that comes from the liquidity of these assets that were evaporated. Because of that collapse. So these pressures created a vacuum. All of these VCs and people with money needed to recapture their earnings, so they started pulling back from the companies that they had invested in. Yeah, the very same companies that hired 1,000 recruiters. Yeah, they're like, oh, okay, we need our money back, we need, you know, start paying us back. So that made them shrink, and Bottom line, 10,000 recruiters or sourcers with 6 months of experience whose previous job was as a bartender or, you know, a concierge or whatever other jobs, all of a sudden flood the market. And that's the, you know, demand and supply. I mean, Susie, you know the very basic principle of demand and supply. Incredibly abundant demand just essentially shut down supply. It's an adjustment. It'll readjust the other way once that settles out, right? So you have like a wave that peaked at the beginning of the pandemic and then it flooded, and then you had this other wave that peaked and then it flooded. We're at the bottom of that flood, and hopefully the next time around the wave will be smaller. So we're not going to go hyperinflation and all that stuff. That's really what it comes down to. Sorry for the deep analysis, but it's essentially Good. You know, I had to hire a sourcer, um, at my previous job in the middle of what you're saying. You know, everybody was hiring sources. I went out and I posted a job and I had 700 applications, you know, all at once. And many of these people were asking for exorbitant amounts of money and they only had 6 months of experience.

Huh, okay, good luck on that.

Well, yeah, just— and I was like, wow, what's going on here? And then now, as you said, there's not there's very few jobs out there for sorcerers. They're out there. People are, you know, returning to work, but it's a different environment now. Yeah. The last thing I'll say about this is those people who went to those jobs where they were highly paid, they left their nice job and they went to the high-risk job and then they got laid off, they're part of the problem because they should never have left that other company. They just left for greed and now they're unemployed and they're asking for that much money again and nobody's willing to pay for that. The people who stayed at their jobs and were— they, they realized this is not a good time to make a switch in the middle of this, you know, and they stayed. Most of them are still working where they were working before. Not all of them. I mean, I was cut. I got laid off. I was part of that whole thing, you know, so I, I was one of the unlucky ones. But others were— others stayed. I didn't leave um, but I was still affected because of the whole down— downturn of the, you know, industry in Silicon Valley Bank. Long story short, is right now a good time to transition out of sourcing? Yes, anytime is a good time to transition out of sourcing, and competitive intelligence is a really good place to go to, wouldn't you say?

I would say so. Yeah, you can't be a sourcer all your life. I mean, after a while it's like, okay, I've done that, and it's like there, it's not— it's kind of monotonous in the end, right? Especially—

it's cool to find people and engage and all that and get a hire, but yeah, but if you don't evolve, you're just doing the same thing over and over.

Yeah.

And for sourcers, for people like you and I, we, we like that change, we like that challenge. And so some people might like the repetitiveness.

That's true.

You can do the same job forever, but you know, our, our native curiosity, you know, gets to the point where we're like, I don't want to be doing something else.

Yeah, expand your horizons, man.

For me, it was data analysis instead of— for you was competitive intelligence. For me, it was analysis and things like that.

Yeah, and learn. I mean, take some courses. There's so many good ones, free ones out there that just expand your skills. Get into AI. If you get, if you get that down, like, on your resume or LinkedIn profile, know how to use AI to be productive and efficient. That's a—

yeah, productivity, efficiency, do more. Do you recommend this master's Uh, not this one particular, but you recommend the master's information?

You know, master's not gonna get me anywhere at this point in my life, but it was more for me. Yes, it's a very good course. One thing I must— I will notice, I don't know if it's the same everywhere, but academia, the stuff you got to study is like 3 years old. I'm like, come on, man, I need to— I need to see some, you know, we're talking about cloud computing these days, not databases, like, so you know what I'm saying? So that's the only thing. I don't know if it's the same everywhere, but I have noticed some of my classes being a little outdated like that. But, but it all in all, it's a good experience. It's a good experience to get on teams with people you don't know. And this is a big bone of contention for me. Sorry. And then we'll go, um, guess what? Guess who does all the work? Me. Because most of these folks have should come straight out of college into a master's? No, you should get into a master's if you want a master's after you have some business experience, have some experience.

That's a good— that's good advice.

Oh yeah, do not— because I see these people, they don't know what they're doing. They're, they're green, they're— they have no experience yet. So anyway, but so it's, it's very dynamic, the whole thing.

Well, uh, I, uh, I always have two questions that I ask every guest, and I'm not gonna let you off the hook. Um, so the, the first of those is, who should be our next guest?

My gosh, I don't know. I mean, you've had so many.

Um, it's a— if it's a repeat, it's okay. Also, they may not accept the invitation, so—

oh God, what's the next question? Let me think about that one.

The next question is, what do you want our listeners who tune in over the weekend, which is majority of them, um, what do you want them to think about? So I I want them to ask themselves a question, not for you to give them an idea, but for them to ask themselves a question. What do you want them to mull on, chew on over the weekend?

Well, I think Betty's got a really good segue. Susie, can you recommend any specific courses on competitive intelligence? Um, I don't have any specific courses in mind, but I know that, um, again, I didn't learn this. I kind of fell into it. Um, Just Google it, see if there's anything out there.

Um, so the question may be, what can you learn?

What can you learn?

Yeah, can you go out there and teach yourself or learn about competitive intelligence?

What interests you? You've got to have a little bit of other interest.

What interests you, I would think? Okay.

Um, even if it's how to, you know, become a horticulturist. I don't know if that's what you like. Um, so Yeah, go learn something, man. There's a lot of free stuff out there. And believe me, doing a master's and working is a lot of work, folks, but I did it. Um, okay, so who should we invite next? Um, you know, I'm kind of out of that world. I know you're having Jerry Crispin on, right? Or was he just on? He's coming on. Okay. Have you had Vanessa Rath on? Yeah, you have. Okay. Ronnie, you've had, um, I don't know, I just— oh, wait a minute, Toby Colshaw.

All right, good one.

He's a competitive intelligence guy. Talented.

Yeah, good one. Yeah, actually, I think I have him. We're connected.

Oh yeah, he's— I mean, I don't know him personally, but I like everything he posts, and he's super amenable and shares a lot. Cool. That's a good one. That's sharing.

Yep.

Share information, man. That's, uh, you know.

Oh yeah, we've been doing that for a while. Dude, I'm gonna reach out to Toby. That's a good one. I thought of that one. Well, thank you so much for making some time for us today. Hopefully you're able to still get to your competitive intelligence today with the few hours that have left.

Yeah, it's crazy, crazy, but it's all good.

Thanks a lot, Susie.

Thank you, Shelly. It was a pleasure. A while.

So awesome.

Very happy.

Well, everybody, uh, tune in. As you, as you heard here, tune in next week, June 14th. We have Jerry Crispin on.

Hey, Jerry!

And until then, be kind to yourselves. Bye-bye, everybody.