Tommy Weinert Live on Shally's Alley

Hey, all right, how's that for an introduction?

Pretty awesome.

Yeah, that's a, that's a way to kick off the show, right? Yeah, thanks to Brooke for making that possible. She's just an absolute genius when it comes to that kind of stuff. That's right. So, all right, hey everybody, you are live on Shelly's Alley Friday, July 21st. Our guest today is Tommy— am I saying this right? Uh, Weinert or Wienert?

Got it.

Okay, Tommy Weinert, not to be confused with White-O. That's a completely different person. Yeah, that's what happens late, late nights, right, on weekends. Yeah, Tommy Wine-O. So Tommy owns his own search firm and focuses on— specializes in security-cleared candidates. So yeah, top secret stuff. And he's based out of Seattle, is that right?

San Diego.

Oh, San Diego. Okay, what else was I thinking?

Seattle, second best West Coast city.

Second best. Okay, all right, all right. Seattle is, right, is what you're trying to say? Okay, right. Yeah, I do like San Diego. Yeah, I think that's where we met. It was at an ERE San Diego a long, long time ago.

Yep, yep.

Many, many moons ago.

Yeah, it sounds right. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I'm actually interested in talking to you about a couple of things. One of them is, of course, the cleared space. It's an area that's near and dear to me. I've worked in a lot of different top secret and above kind of environments with clients. I've even worked with— worked on a project with all 16 of the clandestine agencies. And it's, it's kind of something that I have a bit of an affinity for, probably because I, I watch too much Jack Ryan or, um, you know, those kinds of, uh, Mission: Impossible and stuff like that. Just, it's just cool to, um, you know, to sort of be in that space. And it's something that a lot of people just don't understand or have no clue about because, well, I'll let you explain, but what, what makes top secret or cleared candidate recruiting so much different? Yeah, you tell us and then I'll jump in with my two cents.

Yeah, I mean, first of all, it's at any time we're dealing with a candidate pool of 700,000 or less. There's only 700,000 contractors that have security clearance out of 4 million.

I'm glad you— yeah, I was gonna say because there's 4 million TSSTI and above, but yeah, 700,000 that are contractors. That's the—

yeah, yeah. So at any time, it's a small candidate pool, which makes it very difficult.

But then a limited candidate pool, flat out. And, uh, it's not the kind of thing that you can like, well, we'll just make more, let's send them to school, whatever. The adjudication process is not something that you can kind of wait for, right, if you're trying to make a hire, unless you really are planning it way in advance.

Yes, that's a huge problem. And then anytime there's a data leak or it slows the adjudication process down. So, and in Congress right now is discussing limiting, like taking security clearances away, which is absolutely insane. So that's something that they're discussing. They think that for some reason they think that we're giving away security clearances like candy, as they put it, which is just so misinformed.

But why don't they just revamp the whole system?

I mean, yeah, they're in the process of doing it, but it's It's been challenging. And then another thing is a lot of the people that we— they're hard to find. They don't want to talk to us. Candidates sometimes with high security clearance, you know, they don't want to be reached. And throughout the day, they're typically in, you know, environments to where they can't have their cell phones, they can't check emails. So it's a very tricky environment to work within. But we love it. I've been doing it since 2008 and my wife and I run the company. Sometimes we ask ourselves why we've dedicated the business to this space, 'cause it is so challenging.

Well, you know what? You're gonna have a niche, right? So if the niche is cleared candidates, then you don't have to worry about industry. You can do whatever industry because that in and of itself is a niche. As long as you have something you specialize in, you have a shot at an enduring going concern. Yeah. You know?

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, why not, right? If you know it, what did you— did you yourself ever have any kind of clearance?

Yeah, we, we were cleared, um, both my wife and I. And, um, it's funny, don't really do anything with it, but, you know, it's— we're in the process of required in order to make placements, so. Right, yeah, exactly. But yeah, it's not really necessary, but we're trying to get our company cleared to do some more, uh, specific work to the industry. But, um, But yeah, we've— yeah, of course.

Yeah. And there's a lot of ways that people get clearance. They can, they can have worked with the government, they can have worked with, or have, uh, come out of the military and everything.

Yeah.

Something, you know, it might be an interesting thing to educate the audience about, and that is most people don't really know there's really only 4 types of clearance. There's right a lot of categories and labels that are attached to it, but there's really only 4 in the United States clearances, which is confidential, yeah, top secret, and SCI, which is sensitive compartmented information, uh, which is a fancy way of saying you shall only have access to this data and no data, and then, you know, and that data in and of itself, whatever that is is classified that way. And so that's— those are it. Now, beside that, what makes things really, really tough is that there are so many ways in which people will work with these clearances that are different from one organization to the other, whether it's Department of Defense, Department of Justice, FBI, NSA. They all have their own this and that, and some have polygraphs, some don't. It gets really complicated. And the more clearances you have, the more likely that something that you worked on has to be redacted and can't even be put on your profile. So all that to say that the biggest challenge in finding people with clearance is the fact that many of them, well, they can't say that they have clearance.

Yeah, technically speaking, I don't think— yeah, I don't think you're supposed to say that, uh, that— yeah, that you have one. So it—

I don't think having clearance is in and of itself confidential. Yeah, but if you have like SCI HCS-P, right, if you have SSPI CI/POLY, now we're talking about, okay, this person has access to something specific that may make them a target for blackmail or terrorism or, you know, kidnapping or who knows what, right?

That's the one thing that I think most people don't understand about clearances is what the government is most concerned with is your susceptibility to blackmail. I mean, that's like the number one thing.

That's what the poly is.

Yeah.

So especially the full scope, right?

And then to your point too, that the agencies, they don't honor each other's clearances sometimes. So, you know, so it, it gets to be a big mess sometimes.

Yeah, but it's a big mess. That's, that's right. At least the good news is if you've got top secret, then some of the other things you can kind of Add-on, tack-on. But yes, doing a search, I did many, many searches, probably not anywhere near as many as you, but doing a search, you know, you kind of get tangled up with all these different acronyms and keywords. But I gotta tell you, man, I'll share my favorite tip, and then you'll share your favorite tip. Not that we're giving anything away here, but yeah, my favorite tip is it's easier to find what's not on the page than it is to find every possibility of what could be on the page, right? That sounds cryptic, and it's not meant to be, but what I'm saying is, if you really wanted to capture every top secret— you know, let's just start with that, because confidential and secret ain't that, you know, it's not that big a deal with some of the things that, that you and I have done. But top secret and above is where things start to get fun, right? If you're looking for top secret and above and you want to capture every possible abbreviation or keyword or whatever, we're talking about several hundred different ways that these are put together from abbreviations like ISSA and SAP and all that stuff. So looking for all of these things would be a gigantic gargantuan Boolean string, the likes of which you've never seen. Or you can look for the absence of things like, for example, If I have this and that on my profile, I prob— very likely, let's just say if I live near McLean, Virginia, um, in this particular zip code, it's very high probability I probably work at the NSA. Yeah, I'm just saying, right? Or, um, looking for things like the word declassified or unclassified. Who puts declassified or unclassified on their profile? Well, someone who's also worked with the opposite of that.

Right. Yeah.

So what's your favorite?

So somewhat similar. So it's—

Dang it. I stole your thunder. Sorry.

No, I'll give you two because there's one I really like. I'll start with that one is, so for example, we use NSA, you know, those folks typically have like the highest clearance possible and they're not out there advertising it.

Yeah.

Yeah. So what I did was when I was really having a hard time finding people, I literally went on Google Maps and the first thing I did was I would look and say, okay, what buildings are around the NSA? What companies are around there? You could see the names pop up on Google Maps. So I was like, okay, obviously people at those buildings have the—

Yeah. You might not even be able to, like you were talking about, get into the parking lot. Yeah, you might have to like leave it in your car or not, or not even, or not even bring it in because, or even if you bring it in, there may be a, you know, dragnet that like blocks radio communication. So yeah, the fact that you're like on the grounds of that, of that area, you're probably involved somehow.

A lot of locations are kind of like out in the middle of nowhere, so The population bases are supporting the base. So, um, yeah, we did— I used to do a lot with Google Maps. Like, literally, I went to Street View once and walked around on Street View, and you could read the signs on the buildings, and you could be like, oh, that, that's a defense contractor, that's a defense contractor.

Read the signs on the building. That's nice. Yeah, like virtually walk at the virtual tour.

Totally. I mean, you can go down the rabbit hole real quick, but like That's the stuff I do when it's like I can't find people. Then I start looking at stuff like that. I'm like, okay, how—

or what else? The ancillary— what's, what's around their companies, locations? Um, you know, there, there's a— here's another one, and, and I'm gonna— I don't want to go down this rabbit hole too much, but like military service, for example, certain, um, certain, uh like crosswalk codes, or the Army calls them MOS, the Marines call them MOS-T, the Navy calls them NEC, the Air Force calls them AFSC. But basically it's that code. Yeah. That is your sort of job, like your job code almost. There are several job codes that you just don't have, like for example, certain communications equipment or access to Keyhole, for example. That if you have, you have clearance because just you, you to do it, you were there. And you may have left the military, but you still have that ability to get reinstated sometimes or whatever. So yeah, yeah.

It's also like when you're, when you're in the industry long enough, all you can start, you understand the contracts. And so I know on this contract, that contract requires that clearance. So if somebody's profile comes up and they're on that contract, or I figure out they're on that contract, I can infer what clearance they have. It's the, the really good defense recruiters know how to infer the clearance and just say, oh, we have this clearance because of X, Y, they worked on this, so they have—

they worked on the EDO project, so they have that, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that brings me back to one of the things that we wanted to talk about, which is, um, you're very big on, as you refer to it, old school. Now that's not just because you and I are both old But what you mean by old school is what exactly? And your emphasis is on what?

Well, I guess the way to sum it up, it's outbound, right? I mean, we—

okay, it's outbound finding and reaching out to—

okay, yeah, high touch. I think the phone is the best way to get in touch with someone. You know, I believe that— I don't believe there's a difference between a candidate on a job board and a candidate on LinkedIn as far as quality goes. I know, you You know, a lot of people think that for some reason passive candidates are better than active candidates, which are, you know, I don't agree with. But to me, it's, you know, recruiting is sales and everything stems from that. But starting with that and then learning all the cool new things, you know, utilizing the new technologies. But the basis is always your search has to be good. And your outreach has to be, um, you know, aggressive, for a lack of a better term, because there's a ton of noise in the market. Um, MySpace is highly competitive.

We'll hold on though. So like, yeah, just, I, I wanna, I wanna challenge you with this right here because it can be a point of contention. Yeah. Um, you and I accept the usage of the word aggressive in a positive environment. But for other people, that may not be the case. So, let's, you and I can agree that aggressive is what is the proper positive way of aggressive is to be persistent and not give up. And so, that's, but some people interpret it as stocky or stalkerish or whatever. So really, what we mean here is assertive and not taking no for an answer. But not in the pushy way, um, as in like the candidate says no and you keep pushing, but not taking no for an answer for yourself, like not giving up. Like if you, you know, if you reach out to somebody— this is a, this is a challenge that I have a lot when I'm coaching recruiters, and they say, well, Mike, you send out how many messages? Because I've got a 7-message cadence, and they're like, that's, that's too much. That's a, that's a cadence, and it's like, it's aggressive. Right? And they say aggressive now in that environment as bad, that's not good, that's aggressive, is bad. Well, hold on a second, pause for a minute. How do you know they even got the first message?

100%.

You don't even know if they got it. So to the person receiving it, this is not 7 messages. This may be only 1 because they didn't get the first one, or they didn't get the one to this email, you send it to the other email, or they didn't get the email at all, so you text them, or they, you know, so it's not— it's 7 attempts. but it's not, yeah, 7 messages that, you know, got delivered. It's not like you're, you know, in their face. It's— so I just want to make sure that people don't think what you mean aggressive is the other aggressive.

Yeah, let me also add some further context too. So back to what I said earlier, you have to do your search right as a recruiter. Like, you have to find the right people, and if you find the right people for the right job and you truly believe that is the right fit they are not going— when candidates get really upset is when you miss the mark. You miss the mark. And but you're absolutely right. Aggressive to me is being systematic. It's about, you know, another negative. Now everything I say sounds negative, but like executing a strategy, saying, look, this is how I'm going to go through it. I'm going to—

kidding. Yeah, man, we're all over the place today. Yeah, it's about basically having a plan, working the plan, and going all the way through with the plan because The plan works, and this ties into the other thing they were talking about before, which is response rates. The response rates are a cumulative effect. Your response rate to your very first email is going to be dismal, and the response rates on LinkedIn are, you know, 8 to 12% nowadays. It used to be they would send you to LinkedIn jail if you got 13% response rate, or lower, but that's it, you know, because people are just not, they're not getting the messages. They're not reading. They're not checking their email, or it's not even coming through. There's so much clutter in our inbox. So part of it is actually kind of breaking through the clutter. And I often get third and fourth email responses where the person says, I'm so glad you sent that because I didn't get your other— this is the first message I've got.

100%. 100%. I get that a lot.

Like, I'm so right. Like, it happens enough that you're like, okay, This is why.

Yeah. And to your point too about the clutter, the clutter is going to increase tenfold with all of this AI tech. I mean, it is about to get noisy in our space. And so strategic timing, strategic messaging, all of this stuff is going to be so much more important because, you know, the firms that do spam like crazy have just been given the keys to the castle to spam like nuts with all this new tech.

Tommy, you just gave me a really good idea. We need to invent an email ChatGPT that filters the emails and only sends you the ones, forwards the ones that you actually want to read. So you can tell your chatbot, hey chatbot, or hey ChatGPT, only send me recruiting emails where the recruiter is recruiting for these types of roles. All the other ones just reply with, hey, thanks but no thanks. Product idea, ding! Where's my light bulb when I need it?

Yeah, we need to copyright that quickly.

Yeah. So in your opinion, cumulatively in the total sum of whatever your cadence is, I'm not going to ask you to give me away any secrets, but what would you consider is an end-of-cycle response rate that's acceptable? Once you've sent all your emails, texts, whatever it is that you normally do, what is in your opinion an acceptable, we could do better, but we also could do worse, response rate?

I would say acceptable is 50%, and I would say you should shoot for 70.

Again, cumulate, like after you've done all your campaigns.

Yeah, right. Something— I think that we're— my team is probably between 50 and 70%, but again, it's a different market. Um, but the whole beauty about response rate is a higher response rate, the lower amount of outreach you have to do. So if you get really good at messaging, you're not sending out a ton of messages if you're finding the right people and contacting them. But I would say 50% is acceptable. But I do know that a lot of industry is closer to 30, and it is industry-specific. It is the clear space. We may have a higher response rate.

That's possible. Yeah, because 50 is a little bit on the high end. Um, yeah, you know, even for, for us when, you we're doing all of the different campaigns in my teams, and when I teach this, I target a minimum of 30%. So for me, acceptable is you gotta pass the 30% mark, or you're just wasting your time. You're wasting so much time and energy and work and effort, and you're actually ruining your brand if you're sending out so much garbage that only 30% of the people reply. So you need to target, at the end of your cycle, target 30%. 50% would be great, But, you know, gone are the days when I used to get 85%, 90%.

Oh yeah, forget that.

Yeah, that doesn't happen anymore.

And the other thing to clarify is like we, for everyone listening, a no is a response, right?

Right. A reply. That's right. A reply.

Any type of reply. So whether it's on LinkedIn, text, phone, email, you know, as long as they get back to us at some point, we consider that a response.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Because, hey, you know, ideally, if my message is really targeted and the list is very targeted and I'm reaching the right kind of people. My most preferred answer is a yes, but my second most preferred answer is a no. My least preferred answer is nothing, because then I have no idea if I even got through.

Yeah.

Right? So just tell me, hey, no thanks. That's fine. All it takes for you to get off my list is to say, no thanks, or not for me, or not interested. I'm not going to bother you again. I'm not going to waste my time or yours, or, you know, So yeah, speaking of highly targeted, and this is across the board, you make a— you made a funny reference to unicorns. You want to share that with the audience? You say there's no unicorns, there's only what?

There's no unicorns, there's only horses that we put horns on. And like, what I mean by that is we should always be looking at hiring capable people and whenever possible hiring them into their promotion. Not hiring into lateral moves. And again, I get it, as recruiters, we don't make the requirements, but it's working with the hiring managers to, like, pull the horn off and say, what are we really looking for here? And then find somebody that they could, like, cultivate into that unicorn employee. I just, you know, the term unicorn, purple squirrel, it's like when you're meeting with your hiring team and every rec is a unicorn, it's like unicorns are supposed to be, like, incredibly Rare. How come every one of your positions is a unicorn?

Because it really isn't. That's the truth.

It's not.

It's not. You know, to use the purple squirrel analogy, just get a squirrel and spray paint it, you know. So yeah, I like— and it's not because— it's not that you're like cheating the system, putting in, you know, a square peg into a round hole or whatever. It's that the reality is that those just job descriptions have grown and adapted over time and have evolved to include the things that that candidate that left that position learned while they were on the job. So when they originally hired Tommy, the job description was A, B, C, and D, and then Tommy on the job learned H, Y, Z, and, and element OP. And then when Tommy leaves, they want to backfill that. And so now the job description's got all these other things on it, and, you know, not nobody might have that because nobody has the combination of Tommy's background and Tommy's recent experience. So You know, those recs can, can kind of accumulate a history with them, or the opposite of that, can be a little myopic in, in having something that doesn't exist. You know, we had a friend of mine, a guest on the show, that goes through this, what he calls live sourcing with a hiring manager. You might, you might do this too. On the intake call with the hiring manager, he actually pulls up his SeekOut, and when the hiring manager says, okay, we need them in this state, he pulls in the state. And then these companies and these job titles. And then he shows them, here's the talent pool, and it's like 3 people. And the hiring manager's like, oh wow, that's it? And so, yeah, well, let's start taking some of these things off and see what happens. And the hiring manager's like, oh wow, that's a much better talent pool. So yeah, it's, it's, you're, you're just kind of setting realistic expectations, right?

Well, the thing about that methodology is it benefits— so most of our businesses that we work with are small businesses, and if you as a company care about retention If you care about keeping employees, bringing people into promotions, training them, teaching them is the best way to retain your employees, is giving them a rewarding environment, not bringing people in from lateral moves and they get bored and leave. So where it actually seems like I'm cheating the system by giving you someone less qualified, I'm actually helping your retention and helping you get more for your money because you're going to get someone that hopefully stays longer if you treat them well.

That's a good point. It doesn't just put a year in and then bails out.

Totally. So we— I think it's a really, really good methodology for all companies because if you look for people that are constantly promoted and you're promoting them into their next role, I mean, that's— it's a really good baseline for how you can bring people in. And, you know, also from an HR standpoint, like, you're not bringing everyone in at the max of the pay band. You're bringing someone in lower and they can grow within the pay band and, you know, earn actual raises versus cost of living adjustments. So it, it helps the candidate and it helps the company and it helps the recruiter. It's a, it's a no-brainer. It's a really good strategy.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, remember when we used to call those COLA? I want my COLA.

COLA adjustment.

My COLA, my cost of living adjustment. Yeah. So, um, what— let's, let's like travel back in time. What captured your interest and attracted you initially to recruiting and sourcing?

100% desperation is what got me there.

That's what captured your interest?

Well, so honestly, I was working in a hotel and I worked with a bunch of my friends and they slowly started like getting jobs somewhere and making good money. And I'm like, what are they doing? And I quit my job and didn't have a job for like a couple months and I was just living by the beach and, uh, I needed a job, and so I went and learned how to recruit at this small company that was like insanely good at training recruiters. And they really, you know, it was— it's a huge company now, but they were a small business.

Yeah, you got lucky. A lot of recruiters don't get good training. They just kind of get tossed into the deep end of the pool.

And, you know, yeah, we got insane training.

It's awesome.

Insane training. Yeah, yeah, like a really intensive hands-on training course. In my interview, they made me, uh, call someone with zero recruiting experience in the interview. They're like, get on the phone. I'm like, what?

Just to see how you do. Yeah, you might bumble it around, but yeah.

Yeah.

So, so you got into it out of desperation, but why? So what captures your interest now? Why did— what keeps you in it? It can't be the same thing.

Um, no.

Or something went horribly wrong.

That would be really bad. I'm really— I'm a passionate person and I know the space really well and, um, You know, my wife and I started this business in 2018, and obviously we have the energy of owning our own business. But, um, I just think we're really good at it. And I think that it's a space that a lot of people— recruiting is a space that I think a lot of people don't really understand how critical it is to organizations' growth. And yeah, especially in my space, recruiting can really affect— I mean, it does affect every company. The defense space is ultimately just a large staffing space, and companies live and die by their employees.

Yeah.

So I mean, I like it, and I think that it's also a space that is ripe for, um, like real, real leadership, not just like, you know, people saying the same stuff over and over again. And, um, I— we're just really passionate about it. And I, you know, I never thought I would be, but, uh, the older I get, the more I really, really enjoy it, and You know, we have the opportunity to train a lot of people too, and we get a kick out of training teams and, um, helping people see the light on, on, you know, different ways of recruiting. But it's, it's something we've become very passionate about.

Cool, cool. What, what's been the most unexpected benefit of being in the industry?

Um, honestly For me, it's, I mean, the unexpected benefit would be the freedom it's just given, it's given, you know, me. I've just, I feel like I never would've started a business otherwise. And that has just led me onto this path of being an entrepreneur with my wife. And I never thought I would own a business. But the company I came from was so good at training and showing, you know, people every aspect of the business that, uh, when I left, I was prepared to, to start a business with my wife. And I never thought that that was in the cards, I think, maybe. But so definitely, definitely happy and grateful to be in this.

Yeah, totally unexpected. You ended up being, uh, having the goods to be an entrepreneur, even though that wasn't even That wasn't even on your, on your radar, huh?

And let me just, at a smaller level, like being able to talk to anyone, which is like, it's crazy, like in recruiting, like that, the value to just, I could talk to anyone about anything.

Like it does give you a pretty broad understanding of like business, right? Yeah, you get into, so you learn about so many different aspects of, of industry and economy and Yeah, yeah, it's a really cool industry.

And I just, I hate when people treat recruiting as a, um, junior function within an organization. I've just always like, what, you know, recruiting is not a junior business function. It is quite arguably the most critical function to your business. And it's interesting that, that, you know, kind of gets that rap sometimes within organizations.

Uh, yeah, you know what, to the life, for the life of me, I can't explain. I've had conversations with with some of the top CEOs in the world, CEOs of Microsoft and Cisco and companies like that. And I've had conversations with startup CEOs and CFOs. I've tried to wrap my head and understand why there's such a disparate view of the function. But there just is this almost extremely polarizing, wide gap between those that really value the function, like, uh, Steve Ballmer, and, and it's like, this is the lifeblood of the company, it's the most critical thing, like you just said. And then the others that are like, yeah, anybody could do it, let's just, let's just hire somebody that can read, and, you know, maybe not even that, you know. Like, it's like, wow, okay, how do we go from here? Like, how do we go from here to there? How do we go from a search firm that, that demands and commands and earns 35% fees still today to we're only going to pay the sourcer $22 an hour. And it's like almost the same job. I, I know it's not, it's a different role, but right, but I mean like the value of this versus that is so broad. Um, I've never really— I've tried to explain it honestly. I've tried and I've asked some pretty smart people that are really well connected. About it, and I get different answers every time. Some, some say that it's a perception of value. Some say that it's simply that they don't see the, um, they don't see the level of difficulty. They don't realize how difficult it is. My take on it is, frankly, most people that don't get the value have no idea what the conversion rates are like, how much work goes into it. They, they think The ones that don't get it, the ones that pay $22 an hour for a sourcer, they think that you just push a button and pop, the next candidate comes out of the vending machine. And it's like that easy. Post a job and boop, you know, but even if you post a job, you may or may not get any applicants. And even if you get lots of applicants, they may or may not be the right ones. And even if they're the right ones, you still have to talk to them. Some of them you still have to sell, you still have to negotiate. There's so many other things that go into the activities, but CEOs don't want to hear about activity. They want to hear about the outcome. Yeah.

So I think, yeah, and I think part of it is, you know, we hear a lot like recruiting needs a seat at the table. And like, I don't think recruiting needs a seat at the table. I think what recruiting needs to do is align their objectives with the top-line objectives of the organization and report on that. And I think recruiting metrics are horrible at doing that. Time to fill, everyone talks about that.

It's terrible. That's absolutely terrible.

Yeah, and I think it's our job as recruiting leaders to go to management and say, look, what is important to you? Is it really retention or do you want to build your team up as quickly? Is it product delivery? What is important?

Is it really time? Is it time? Is it quality or is it cost? Right.

They're going to say it's— they're going to say getting the right people in the right seat as quickly as possible. Say, okay, our metrics are now going to be aligned to that and that's how we're going to report and that's how we will— drive forward. But I think in recruiting, we're really bad at having those conversations. And it's critical to do that because we, I'll just say, this one story, I went into a BU leader, a business unit leader, and he told me my recruiting data was BS and I didn't know what he meant. I'm like, this is the real data. And he educated me basically like, I don't care about anything you're reporting. Like this doesn't matter to me.

That's kind of what I'm saying. Yeah.

Yeah, this is what matters.

They don't like— they don't, they don't want to see the activity. It makes no— they hired you for the activity.

Yeah, yeah. They want to see the results. And I think they want to see the activity focus. They want to see the outcomes.

They want to see the outcomes. That's, that's so true. And even as a, even as a search firm where you're ultimately— your reward is your commission, you get paid for the, for the hire. Even as a search firm, Hires are still not the outcome. That's the result. But the outcome is, like you said, the right person in the right job at the right time. Getting somebody that's going to do the job well and is going to, and is going to come in and do the job sooner or soon enough to not cause problems, you know, or delays or whatever. So there's a lot that goes into that. So the outcome is really filling it on time and with good quality. It's not just a hire because that's how you make mistakes. That's how you, you know, let's just hire somebody because we could just hire anybody, right?

You know, and on time does not mean less than your time to fill.

On time means when is it needed, when is it needed, and how hard is it going to be, and did we have enough runway, right? Right. If we know this job is going to take 3 months to fill and you tell me that it's got to be filled in 2 weeks, ain't happening, baby. It's just that, yeah, I mean, but I have to have the data to be able to tell you how long it's going to take. I can't just say intuitively, oh, it's going to take this long. Well, really? Oh, look, in the past, these other similar jobs with these other similar companies have taken this long, um, and here's the reason why. Here's the size of the market, and here you want to dive into the data, sure, we can do that, but let me tell you, this is how long it's going to take. Set the expectations, right? Otherwise, yeah, you're just, just destined to um, take a nosedive. And as far as the seat at the table, Tommy, let me ask you this. Yeah, how did they get to the table? They got recruited, right?

Right.

I mean, how many people at the table have been recruited? So they gotta know that there's gotta be somewhere deep down in their, in their psyche that they, that they realize that we have a seat at the table vis-à-vis we put them in that seat.

Well, the funny thing is, is like, this is not a knock, but like, I mean, executive search firms make a ton of money and a lot of that is retained on. And so they know how much they, you know, spent to get executives at the table oftentimes. So yeah, you're right. It's, yeah, it's an interesting— I mean, this could be— I could talk about this.

Sure. The value of a senior-level executive, that's a game changer. Is a force multiplier, and the value of someone that may be an entry-level role is not the same. But that's why you don't pay the same. However, the value is still the same. You know, the price may be lower, but the value is the same. You know, it's just price versus value is a completely different conversation.

Yeah.

So, what—

back to original point you had too, real quick. So, the paired, like the hiring manager sourcing that you mentioned, like doing the live sourcing with the hiring manager, That's a great way to like start getting them into our heads and seeing what we're dealing with, with the market and being a little bit more collaborative and kind of, you know, elevating the reputation of the function.

But anyways, very wise for one so young. What is the single most, single most difficult role you've ever worked? And I'm interested in the why it was difficult more so than the, you know.

Oh, I know exactly what—

yeah, most people do. Most people know exactly what it is. Yeah, it's the hill you died on. Yeah, sometimes twice.

I don't want to say— I don't want to say too much, but we were, um, this is crazy, we were hiring F-15 instructor pilots to live in Saudi Arabia and teach the Royal Saudi Air Force how to fly the F-15s that we just sold them. And so they had to be US F-15 pilots. Uh, as you can imagine, the fighter pilot community is very small and very connected. And once we called one and told them what we were proposing we pay—

it got out.

I think that one person just told all of them, like, this company is going to call you and they're nuts. And, uh, so every time we call these fighter pilots, they would just You know, we did, we did end up hiring a couple of them, but I'm not kidding you, we were $200,000 short on salary from the first offer. $200,000. So they were demanding like $300,000 to $350,000, if I, if I'm remembering correctly. This was a long time ago. And, uh, I mean, that was nuts. That was absolutely crazy. And think about the job, like, they, they were teaching people how to fly fighter jets.

Why didn't you just call Tom Cruise? I mean, really, just Totally. That is the hardest.

That's the hardest thing we ever worked.

And I bet I had something similar to that. Not that hard, but it was test pilots for a different scramjet. Um, so they, in the US, not, not anywhere near as hard as like, you know, going somewhere else and all that, but it was test pilots. And, um, my creative solution to that I'm not shy to tell you is I ended up figuring out that a lot of them were hobbyists and used RC, you know, their remote control jets in their spare time and with their kids and whatever. So a lot of them actually like join these clubs and go on these airfields where they could fly these, you know, fake combat mini remote control jets and stuff like that. And I was like, wow. So I found a couple of these clubs. Reached out to the clubs. And like you said, that once it was— once word got out in the club, all the club members are like, hey, check this out, this is pretty cool, it's— they're testing this technology. And, you know, um, so that was, that was pretty interesting. Another time I had a— I had to hire a Flutter engineer.

I don't know what that is.

They're the ones that, um, they're— it's a combination between— you can't get this degree anywhere, um, it's a combination between material science statistics and math. They're the ones that use telemetry to measure the flutter of, uh, wings in supersonic jets in order to detect at what tolerance levels, how fast they can go, what the material— so they're, they're, they're basically taking the, the, the scramjet to the limit until right before it fails, and they gotta test that, um, with telemetry and calculate it so they can make improvements on it. It's nuts. And the reason is because nobody goes to school for that. You have to have, yeah, these three very different skill sets come together. Um, and there's not that many jet makers, you know, supersonic jets. There's only a few of them.

So yeah, that's crazy.

It's really weird.

Yeah, nutty stuff.

Yeah. So yeah, thanks for sharing that. We're getting pretty close to wrap up. So I've got, I've got a wrap-up question that I always ask, and I started asking a new one. So I've got, I've got my usual wrap-up question for you. I'm sure you know it's coming. But here's the other one. Who should be our next guest? Ooh.

Who should be your next guest?

It's totally fine if they say no, but just like, you know, who do you think you'd want? Who would you want on the show? Even if they say—

have you had Susanna Fraser on yet?

No, I have not.

She would be great. She's a hoot. I love her. She would be really good to chat with.

I know her. That's good. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. All right, cool. And then here's the— wow, here's the whammy. What would you like our audience members to walk away with and kind of noodle on? So it could be a question or a statement. I don't want to make it a closing remark, but something that you want them to think about, contemplate, consider, whatever. A lot of folks watch this show over the weekend. So, yeah, something— give them something to think about or a question to answer to themselves. Um, that's important.

Yeah, I mean, I think it goes back to, well, let me say two things really quick. The first is considering a career in cleared recruiting. I mean, it is an incredibly stable market. I've been in it since 2008. If you remember, something pretty bad was happening around then. And I mean, this has been a very stable market. So for recruiters dealing with layoffs, You don't have to have previous experience recruiting cleared people. Just, we always are looking for good recruiters in the market. So that's one thing. But the other thing is back to the getting a seat at the table type of discussion is how can you better inform your counterparts in hiring about, you know, the saying is always recruiting is broken, but it's not, it's hiring. Hiring is really wounded right now. And how can you kind of help inform your leadership and your hiring managers that they play arguably a more critical part in the hiring process when it comes to metrics than we do as recruiters, since the ball is in their court for the majority of the process? So it's how do you have those informed discussions with them? That type of discussion benefits the entire industry. So I would, that would be my, my people would noodle on how they could accomplish that. I think that's what I'd want them to walk away with.

That's cool. And I see what you did there. You used critical in both senses. You've got critical hires, and in this case, critical as in like in the ER, on the verge of— Right.

I didn't mean to do that. So I picked up on it though.

That was good. That was crafty. I like that. I like that. That's really good. Yeah, so think about what your role can be in elevating this conversation. Forget about the seat at the table and, you know, lofty ideals. Just convey the point of view that our metrics are not really doing their job, that we need to look at outcomes, and how do we have that? What do we need to do to present this so that they start getting the value and not just looking at us as you know, resume screeners.

Yeah, we're— it's a partnership. I mean, it's a partnership.

Yeah, but what do we need to do to prove— like, what are the— what do we need to show? What do they need to see so that we can prove it?

Yeah.

Yeah, that's pretty cool. You got some applause from the audience. Oh, good. Awesome. Wow, man. Well, hey, this was great. I kept you a little bit more than the 30 minutes, I promise. But that usually happens. We have so much fun. I need to just tell people this is an hour-long show and then end it early. That's what I need to do. No, I appreciate you having me.

It was, uh, it Thanks so much. Yeah, it was great fun. Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, cool. Well, everybody have a great weekend. We'll see you back here next Friday, and be kind to each other. Take care.