Tracey Friend Live on Shally's Alley

Hey, hey, hey everybody! Happy Friday! You are live on Shally's Alley and it is Friday, January 17th. We are halfway through January, actually more than halfway through January already. I mean, I'm still shaking the snow off of my snow boots here from my little, uh, ski trip. So it's crazy how fast the year is going, but I tell you, I think it is a better year already than all of 24 was, at least for me anyway. Uh, thanks for joining us. I am so excited and tickled to have a very special guest today, Tracy Friend. Tracy and I go way back. I don't even want to—

way back, way back.

Admitting how far back we go would actually age us both to embarrassment, so And anybody who's younger will sit there and go, oh my gosh, they'll sit there and go, what is that? What is that date? I don't even know. It's— it was another millennia when we met. Yeah, it was in the last century.

It was, you know, I mean, it's crazy. It's crazy how long— I mean, we were pre-kids and now we have a lot, you know, grown kids.

Well, I know, right? Yeah, pre-kids. And, uh, but folks, for you that do not know Tracy, she's been out of the public eye for a while, but she used to be very, very prominent in the talent acquisition space, particularly in sourcing. Tracy was one of the, I would say, maybe 5 or so people that basically broke ground on internet sourcing back then, you know, with myself and Glenn Guttmacher and a couple of other folks that aren't even like, they're not even in the industry, like they've retired or, or whatever. So, um, when we talk about OG, Tracy is the O in the OG.

I mean, yeah, do you remember when Computerworld, I was doing that one presentation and I was teaching them how to peel back URLs, and this is the day before, this is before any security And we got into one that I can't remember what company. Oh, CSC. It was CSC's employee directory. And then it made it on the front cover of Computerworld. And it blew up my training company at the time. Like, it just— it good in a good way. It was really incredible. It was amazing. But that was— talk about innovative. Now that's like, ah, that's nothing.

Right, right. But that was front page news. Yeah. I've been, uh, some of the things that I did ended up on the COVID of, uh, Fortune and, uh, Forbes and Wall Street Journal. I haven't done anything worthy of being front page news in a decade, at least.

I stay away from the front pages these days.

I know, right? I intentionally don't want to do anything that's front page news. Alyssa says hi.

Yeah.

Hey. Oh my God, and here's, here's one of the other OGs. Oh my God, they're coming out of the woodwork.

Um, and Jeremy too.

Jeremy. All right, we are, we are, we've got a tribe going on now. Um, this is awesome. I love it. Absolutely love it. Uh, well, for those of you that don't know, here's, uh, here's Tracy's LinkedIn profile. And, um, I say, wait, was it— it was Recruiter's Aid, right? Or was it before?

Oh no, it was Claybrook and Associates.

Claybrook, right? Okay. Claybrook then became Recruiter's Aid or something like that.

Okay. I sold it to PeopleClick, remember?

Right. Yeah, back in the day.

Back in the day.

That's awesome.

Memories.

Yeah, good memories. And you know, since then, uh, Tracy's gone back into more of a— well, not back into— Tracy took on some leadership roles, spent a decade with one of the largest BPO, RPO outsourcing organizations, breaking ground there with AgileOne. And now has come all the way back to where I live in Atlanta. She's not living in Atlanta, but she's working at Global Payments here in Atlanta, which is a fintech basically. Would they still be considered a fintech or—

Absolutely.

Banking. Yeah, that's what I thought.

Yeah.

So, you know, aside from basically originating the sourcing function, Tracy's also gone through a lot of transformation and change in TA. So I wanted to ask about that and, um, get some of the wisdom on, um, managing change, dealing with change, lessons learned, uh, anything like that that you would like to share. I mean, I know it's beyond sourcing, it's architecture, it's innovation. Yeah, management, it's scalability. I mean, RPO to corporate. Um, so what are some of your favorite lessons learned? Oh my gosh, from, from dealing with change in this industry.

You know, I'll tell you what, I've changed a lot from my 30s to my 40s to my 50s.

Um, stop there, stop there.

I'm not there.

It's not there.

Not there. Completely not there. You know, I used to be so idealistic, and I think Rob McIntosh can even ideally can say that. And I used to die on every sword because if it wasn't right, it wasn't right, and I was going to be really outspoken. Um, and now what I've learned is to survey my landscape and to really understand how the organization works in order to just realize what's possible and not take things— not take things so personally anymore. And that has been my biggest change and evolution. And you want to know something? It's worked. It's worked. I have better partnerships. I solve problems better. I work with my business leaders better. I work with my HR business partners much better. It's just been— I think that's been my personal journey, my personal growth journey in leadership. The other thing that I would say, and I would say it for anybody in leadership, is Your data is, and how you work with data, really drives a layer of credibility. You know, recruiting is, it is, I mean, it's just, Shelly, we're going through so much transformation and there's so much emotion that goes on right now with transformation. That it's— and it's a layer of transparency with it. Like, I had one of our executive leaders. We're making some really big decisions about pushing things offshore. And you'll appreciate this because he challenged me and he said, well, is that going to impact recruitment quality? And I know this leader and this leader loves that high touch. And I said, you know what, we are the way you like it with the high touch. I said, we are shifting the mindset to become an Amazon fulfillment center. And I said, and that's a different value and it's a different experience and it will be different for you. I said, now we're going to go this direction and I have a feeling we'll be having a conversation a year from now that we'll be coming back and finding a happy medium. And it was funny because he laughed and he goes, you're probably right. But I at least addressed it and I was as calm as can be and but addressed the change in a really thoughtful way and was not afraid to address it anymore. I just say it calmly and just say, you know what, it's going to go here and it's going to go all the way back. And I think that to me is what age and wisdom has brought. Like, it's just age, experience, and a lot of bruises. That's—

yeah, yeah, yeah. I think credibility is— data does build a lot of credibility. That, um, I like to say data, or the analysis of the data, because raw data means nothing, but the analysis of the data, the interpretation of the data, combined with making a lot of mistakes is where wisdom comes from. You know, you can have all this analysis and know where things stand, but that's literally like an Instagram picture of right now. It doesn't really help you with trajectory or where things are bound. And recruiting and TA are so often in, in, in constant rapid change. I mean, it's just the nature of our business in our industry, our sector, because we have to deal with shifting and fluctuating markets for talent, economies, you know, everything. There's always a lot of disruption. And I don't mean disruption of recruiting. I mean a lot of market disruption that we have to deal with. So expectations really quickly evolve. But it's important, I think, to recognize that we need to not just navigate it, but as you said, embrace the transformation and help our teams kind of more than survive, help our teams thrive in basically darkness and uncertainty because it's just the nature of the beast. Data is a part to shed a light. I like what the other thing that you said, which is not to take it personally. I think data does help not take it personally, but I think also taking it personally too much also helps not taking it personally.

You know what, here's, here's the crazy thing, right, is like we do a lot of hiring in India. India has wait periods, 90 days, right? Can't change that unless you want to buy out the wait periods, right?

And pay the penalty. So time to hire is affected by these mandatory government—

oh yeah. So, you know, if people want to shrink hiring, there's things that you can shrink But you can't change the 90 days and make— you can't change that wait period unless you engage finance and they want to look at what that investment looks like and where it's critical. It's not a talent acquisition impact. It's a, hey, this is the options that we have. These are the—

it's not a strategy or a change. It's a situation like compensation. You may sometimes have to make a change or expect in, you know, change the compensation because of the nature of that role. But it's not something that is a company policy.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Besides the patience and not taking things personally, what do you, how do you feel about listening? That's the other thing that I mean, I'll just, I'll be the first to admit, I did a lot of learning throughout my career and I still do. I still pride myself on constantly being open to new ideas and learning and everything. But I think there's a very big distinction between learning and listening. You have to listen in order to learn, I think. But there's a different kind of listening. What I'm talking about is pausing or having the patience to absorb everything that you can absorb before you start making calls. I made so many mistakes by coming out of the woodwork and, and making a call because I had all this experience and wisdom and data, and I just, you know, despite having made a lot of mistakes, would just come out and be like, well, this is the way it needs to be. But realizing then in retrospect that I should have listened more because there are things that people just take time telling you and they just take time coming out. You know, it's— I don't know how you feel about that, but it was— to me, it was the patience thing and not taking it personally was a huge lesson that I had to learn. But this other one, I'm still learning how to listen. As a consultant, it's, you know, like a big part of my job. So I have to listen and take notes and analyze and synthesize. I've learned that's helped helped me learn to put all the information together, listen as much as I can before I come back with a report. Because as a consultant, you can't come out of the gate and be like, well, here's what I think you should do. They didn't hire you to tell them what they do. They didn't hire you to tell them what to do. They hired you to put together a solution that makes sense for them. And if you just come in and say, here's the best practice, that doesn't work. There's no such thing. So how do you feel about listening as part of this dealing with change?

So there's listening, and then there's incorporating what you learn.

Yeah.

And for example, if you— as you go through, I, I think being a recruiter, you get, you get visibility into all aspects of the business. Yes, right.

I love that. Yep.

And you get— you really— every sector, every level. Yeah. And so I, I have our executive recruiting side, and you, you get to see things at so many different levels, and listening comes out in so many different ways. For example, you know, even when you're recruiting a manager may, or a leader may be selecting somebody, but you've been part of something that maybe contributes to that person's success or not, and bringing that in, say, you know, I was in a meeting and I heard X, Y, and Z, and it is, it seems that this person may also really have to have these following skills because of how they'll be interacting. How do you foresee that? That's where listening to me adds value. It's what do you do with what you hear. It's how do you ask questions. How do you tie together? I call it connecting the dots. How do you connect the dots? And when do you connect the dots? It's if you have different leaders, like if you have a different leader that likes to see multiple candidates before they make a decision, but you have another leader that only wants to put one at a time. It's one of those things where you just look at it. You get my dog who's giving your opinion.

Yeah, he's got something.

I love it, right? You also, you have to just tie at the end of the day. You have to just tie everything together. And you've got to point it out and you've got to say, 'Hey, look, I'm going to help you get to a decision. But this leader likes to compare and I'll prep them. And here's what I know and how I prep them.' So, it's what you do with it and how you turn it into action. That to me is really important when it comes to listening.

So, it's not, I guess, the difference between hearing and listening. So, it's not about, I guess what you're saying in handling this change is not about just being a better listener and taking the pause to absorb everything before you start flapping your lips. But what you're saying is it's more than that. It is taking what you're hearing to heart and really doing something about it before you come back with an answer. So not just that people feel like they were heard, but that— that's a really good point because I think there is a distinction there, right? You can absorb all this information, process it, and analyze it just like any other data source. The listening, you can take it in. But it's the how do you come back and change what you're saying or what you're going to say based on this new input. Is there— do you have any secrets to what you do to let people know that you're— that you changed what you were going to do or say because of what they said? I mean, without, you know—

so get off of email. So this is where I—

oh, okay.

This is where I really firmly believe we have to get off of text, we have to get off of email, and because it's so often misinterpreted. And I'd be curious to what other people experience, but what I have found is I will say something now, and then I will pause, and I will say— I will anticipate how it will be misinterpreted So I will rephrase what I said and I'll say, hey, often this gets misinterpreted as XYZ. So I do that. Or I wind up, if I know somebody's going to receive the information differently now, I'll sit down with them because of where they are, because of how they touch what we do or where they are or what other projects they have going on. They may hear it differently. So it's sitting down to say, hey, I know you have this, I'm going to share with you something and I'm really curious as to how you hear it. So I just sometimes it's just pausing and asking people how they receive that information and how they interpret it because it's the dialogue and it's okay and just so you know, because I know the stuff you're working on, it may be interpreted. And yeah, it gets lost in translation. Exactly. And it's taking that time to ask those questions. And oh my gosh, it solves so much heartache. But if you do, you can't do that over email, you can't do it over text. And it's just like, hey, can I just grab you for 5 minutes I just want to make sure what I read is how I need to receive it. And that is, you know, that's a big thing. And that's, if I can impart anything to anybody, that's been like my big little secret thing that I've—

That's pretty cool. So almost like reminding the person or people that you're talking to that you may have other meaning or intention in the message than what they interpret and that they basically reminding them that they should also listen for their own bias in the message and make sure that the intention was there rather than I think what a lot of folks do is making snap judgments, which is definitely one of the superpowers of email is snap judgments. Hence, the email flame wars of old. So, you're saying remind the people that they may interpret what you're saying different than what it's intended. And so, stop and think about it. And ask questions and check in with them. OK. I think email.

Do you know, Shelley, that's just like, I have global.

Intercultural translation.

Intercultural piece too. There's words, I absolutely love them. And I'll, you know, sometimes humble pie is a beautiful thing. And I'll say, I'll send them a message in IM. I'll go, OK, silly question. What does that mean? Like, what does that word mean? And I just, and then I'll put like a little emoticon or something. Because humble is not a bad thing either. Humble is really good.

I think, you know, I've always been very Socratic in my approach. So it's something that I like to imprint in others when I'm working with them is don't stop asking questions, right? And so I've never been shy about, I don't know what that means, tell me what that means. I'd like not to make assumptions. But that was my— I mean, that was what I studied in school was cross-cultural communication and intercultural communication. And so you learn, um, that so many things mean different things to different people because of where they're from and how they grew up that you wouldn't even begin to be able to expect or understand. There's, uh, semiotics. Semiotics, which is like the meaning of communication before writing. Like, it's you can communicate things like the reason stop signs are red, for example, right? In our culture, in Western culture, red is stop, red is caution, red is pay attention. In other cultures, red is fortuitousness. It's luck. It means other things. So, their stop signs are not red because that would be confusing because they'd be like, "Good luck ahead." Wait, what? Right? So it's, it's really the fundamentals. Um, so I think that's a really good lesson. Email, to me, email and letter writing, you know, and faxes and all that, these are asynchronous communications. What I mean by that is you put your thoughts down, you send them, they have time to process, which is good, and send it back. But that can also be bad. However, it, it isn't a conversation. And texting Feels like a conversation, but I want to remind people texting is just like email. It isn't a conversation. It is also asynchronous because whatever you send is— needs to be interpreted before it reads. Now, a lot of folks will have, like my, my, my daughter, she has lengthy texting conversations with her boyfriend and, you know, they go back and forth. They can say it seems like they're talking, but when they actually talk, um, things get settled quickly versus when they text. Sometimes on both ends they end up having, uh, you know, misinterpretation. And like, I'll see her like put the phone down, be like, I'm so angry. I'm like, what happened? And she'll tell me, be like, I don't think that's what he meant, right? Because what you're saying— so you're saying pick up the phone. Now what about Teams though? Because Teams is like, I don't know, man, don't take my Teams away. I'm kind of heavily dependent on Teams.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, we're a big Google shop, right?

Google Meet and Google Chat.

We do Google Chat. We do a lot of Google Meetups. And you want to know something? I'll sit there and have that meeting. And look, it comes down to being real too. Sometimes just being absolutely real and absolutely honest. Sometimes I'll say things to leaders that I'm not— if I feel like I'm being too direct, I will preface myself to say, I will preface myself, this is not being disrespectful. This is being direct in what I need or where I believe the issues to be. And I'm okay with having a dialogue here. Sometimes it's acknowledging the ugly up front.

It is what it is. I didn't—

right. It's not It's just, it's where we are today at this moment in time. So it's kind of like I have the saying with my husband, we laugh, we go, I love you, I love you today, I love you at this very moment in time. And you got, you know, you take that, that fun, um, right now, peace, right? I love you right now at this moment in time. And I, but it's that same piece, right? And it's, you know, telework coworker, you love them, but it's that same like way of communicating. It's breaking it down simply with a smile, with, you know.

Okay, yeah, it's that, that involves a little bit of nakedness and vulnerability and transparency, I think, which is a little hard for, for people. And it may be something that time will imbue on us. Speaking of time, the future of recruiting Um, I don't want to get into the whole generational, you know, gap because I've been doing this long. We both have been doing this long enough to know that when, you know, people were talking about the millennials, uh, who are now the ones that are in power, right, they were saying this and that about millennials, and now they're saying the same thing about the next generation or whatever. So there's always this— the people that are coming up will get bombarded with expectations from the people that are already there. So, I don't want to make this about generation, but I do want to find out from you, looking ahead, now that the millennials are in power and the next generation is getting bombarded with all these expectations, what is really going to be changing? What is going to be evolving in the next 5 years as a TA leader because of this evolution, right? There's all this constant change, but then behind that, there's a change in things like teleworking, uh, you know, compensation, the way people expect to be treated at work. There's a lot more going on than just technology and ChatGPT, right? There's all these other deep fundamental changes. Looking ahead, I know the crystal ball is not usually very transparent, but if you had a crystal ball, Um, how is this going to evolve in the next 5 to 10 years?

Oh my gosh, you know, picture— I absolutely— so those who know me know that I have two that just recently graduated college, and I— they work really hard, but I admire the boundaries that they have put around what they want and what they don't want.

Oh, okay.

We have not done that, right? And now we're starting to see this in our corporate environments and the different— okay, there, you didn't want to talk about intergenerational.

No, but it's an experience.

It's experience. It's how people approach work and how people, where people draw lines. And I think with the way organizations work today and the way we continue as organizations to make decisions around doing more with less, I think what we're going to see is more, more lines in the sand around what people will and will not do. And it will change how we incentivize. It will change how we work. It will change how we, frankly, even how we attract talent inside the organization and what those boundaries look like. I think that's going to evolve. I think that is going to be an evolving message. And I know that seems very high, but I see it now. And then I see the construct, like, as a TA leader, and I talk to other TA leaders, you know, look, a lot of TA organizations are shrinking right now. And that's just it, right? They're shrinking or they're flattening, or we're doing a lot more with less.

A lot more with less. Yep.

What that means is the career growth and opportunity starts to diminish, right? So I challenge as a TA leader, the hardest discussion to have with somebody is that you may or may not be able to offer them career growth inside your group. So what does that mean? So it's having different conversations that may be uncomfortable. That's the piece that I also see is I think we're going to have a lot more uncomfortable conversations. And we're— that we weren't necessarily prepared for. But at the end of the day, like, if I used to go to a person who worked for me and said, hey, I think you should look outside this group, um, it would come back to me like, oh my gosh, Tracy doesn't want me in my group. This is, this is how personal people would take it. But I think the conversation is going to shift and it's going to be, here's how my skills apply to other roles outside this group. It's not that I don't want you and I don't love you. I want to promote your career growth. But that information, that message will be received by different groups very differently. How is that?

That's good. It'll be more acceptable to shift around in an organization, to move around.

For some, right? Because you and I grew up where we're like, what, you don't, you don't want me in your group? You know, we, we grew up with that whole, you know. Yeah, I don't know. I, I just, I just think we're gonna have to look at the world and have different layers of conversations. And I don't know if if people are ready for those layers of conversation.

Well, that's exactly why I'm asking you, right? As a change leader, I don't know how many folks out there have thought about some of the really deep, significant, impactful things that are changing right now. You know, there's a lot of talk about AI and automation. But if you stop for a moment and think about AI, what we're doing with AI may be different, but how we're doing it is the same as it was in 1930. It hasn't changed. This is really not a very big evolution in technology. It's just a change in how we're using it. And it's become easier to use, but it's the same logic tree based on mechanical levers that you make decisions with. And a computer can do that repetitively with a set of rules. It's really not that different. They're not cognizant machines, they're not intelligent machines, but it's become much more approachable, much easier, much faster. So this is shrinking the world. Then you have this globalization that's happening as well. Less and less things are truly, you know, from one place. So much of what we do is now impacted by a lot of different places. Boundaries are sort of shifting and shrinking. And these changes, you know, they're geopolitical, they're technology, they're— it's a lot to handle all in one fell swoop. I'm afraid that some of us might wake up in 5 years and realize that so much has changed that we're not able to operate in this new world order, right? With these new boundaries, this new— I don't want to say it's about technology because I will tell you this. My children are both very intelligent. However, they cannot use technology as well as I can. And it's not because they're not smart. It's because to them, technology is like to you and I running water.

It's just there.

You open the tab, like it is there. It's part of the infrastructure. So they're much more comfortable using it, but they're not really digging into all the— you and I used to break it apart. How does it work? Can we make it do things it wasn't supposed to? They're operating within the boundaries of what the technology is supposed to do.

How can I break it? How can I break it?

Exactly. They're not thinking about that. They're just using it. They're just using it. Um, so they don't mind having 27 apps to do one task, where you and I and people in our generation are looking for the one-shot solution, right? Everybody wants that one platform that has everything. My kids are like, why would you— if I want to do this, I use this app. But it's so, it's so disparate that, um, My kids have, instead of phone numbers, they have ways to communicate as their Rolodex, right? Like if I want to talk to Tracy, I WhatsApp her. If I want to talk to Patricia, I Snapchat her. If I want to talk to Katrina, I message her. It's like, it's just all these different platforms. None of my kids or none of the kids that I know are saying, why can't we put all of this in one app?

Okay, but to your kids— like, my kids now won't put any of their personal relationships online. They do not post their relationships at all. That's a big change because we're like, that's a big change.

That's a growing pain. So what happened was we got too comfortable sharing everything and didn't realize the impact. Then it came back and the check cached, right? And now people are reeling back from, you know, all that oversharing and everything. Um, but I think also the other thing that happened is I used to have— when I used to do presentations, I used to have this chart, this visual chart. I haven't used it in a while.

That was like bigger now.

Yeah, right, way bigger. 28, 28 point is too small. Exactly. Um, but it was like, you know, used to be on the left-hand side was like LinkedIn and Facebook and, and it was converging Yeah. And then on the other side, it was diverging and there were 27 or 30 icons, right? Well, I was— what I was doing is I was talking about predicting how, why, while everybody is hopping on board with these technologies, people are starting to choose sides. And that's exactly what happened. Now, some folks only use WhatsApp because that's— that they've said— put their foot down and say, that's, that's how I'm going to communicate. So for us in recruiting and TA, we have to learn that not everybody's on LinkedIn, that not everybody's gonna get an email. My kids, if I email them, it'll be probably a decade before they see that email. You know, it's so different communication and conversation and the different technologies that it's not just about ChatGPT. It's about this conversion of too many different things out there, too many choices, too many, And people are starting to, like you said, the boundary. I think that's where it comes from. They're trying to thread that needle in a very narrow path in order to not be overwhelmed with 57 apps. They put their foot down and say, I'm on WhatsApp. That's it. End of story.

End of story. But you know what you're saying too, if you really dial back of what I just heard you say, is it's the transformation in how we give and receive information. And it's, it really is. I mean, and that's the biggest part of transformation. Do you remember how techie I used to be? I'm like, oh, do the internet. Oh, do this. Oh, do that. Now I'm like, oh, pick up the stinking phone. Just pick up the phone and have a conversation. Right. That's innovation to me these days.

Well, you know, the interesting thing is it's not a phone anymore. When you pick up the phone and make a call, you're not even using the telephone lines anymore.

No, you're, yeah, you're not.

It's still the, it's the internet, right? We, but what you're saying is have a live conversation.

Yeah.

Yeah. As opposed to have this asynchronous. Yeah. That's, that's right.

Because we're not receiving it because you just even said there's too many different mediums and, you know, I'm, your kids may get an email. And they're not going to read it.

Did you get my email?

But in your mind, you communicated to them, you sent them an email. And that's what we think in work.

Right? The recruiter that says, well, I emailed all these candidates, but nobody replied. How do you know they got it?

Right, right, right. Yeah, Rob said I closed my Facebook. That's why I miss you, Rob, because you're no longer on Facebook. So now I've got to find another way. To stalk your life.

So we don't know how to reach you anymore, Rob. We were all on Facebook with you and now you're not there anymore. Um, but yeah, that's right, man. I— yeah, I have been threatening to do this for so long and I, I'm still a little ways away from it, but I have been threatening to close my LinkedIn account. I've thought about it. Uh, it's just like, if somebody wants to reach me, they know how to reach me. I don't really need LinkedIn anymore. And people are always like, well, what about this? What about that? I know there's a lot of reasons to still have it, but man, it's been been in the back of my— I want to do what Rob did with Facebook. I want to just like delete it and just be like, okay, I'm done. I— something— if something's important, it's gonna get to me. But I'm not ready yet. I just have been threatening to do that for a while. Yeah, pick up the phone, right? Yeah, but your number changed, Rob.

You changed your number because I stalk you so much. Text me your new number, Rob.

Oh, I love it. I text my kids to tell them I sent them an email. That's Awesome.

I text my kids telling them that. Yeah, I sent them an email. I love it.

Hey, did you get that email?

I tell you, I have a daughter that I text and it's— it goes into the abyss of 50,000 other texts. She just doesn't answer. Yeah, she doesn't answer. She just doesn't answer. So she just, you know, that's it.

What happens if you call?

That's it. You know, she answers. That's it. She will answer the phone.

This is the only call she received all year.

No, there's Rob's number. Hey, if anybody wants— Rob, Rob McIntosh's number. There it is.

Rob, delete that, man. I don't know if you want anybody calling you.

Yeah, that's awesome. Oh, that's awesome. I love it.

So going back to— like, I'm not— I'm gonna, I'm gonna giggle about this for a while now. Um, going back to something I was, I was asking about before with kind of the crystal ball and, and all this change. Um, there's a lot fewer of us than there are of them. And yes, I'm using us versus them in that people from, you know, our timeframe of experience is one of the smallest populations. So at some point, there will be this, this expansion of people with fewer experience or less experience entering management and leadership roles. Right? How is that going to affect change? They're less mature, they're less experienced, they're younger when they're getting these VP titles.

They're younger. I'm gonna tell you, I— again, it goes back to communication. So I have been interviewing some senior-level tech leaders, and, you know, because we love tech and I love to know what's going on and how it all connects I ask lots of questions. But for these leaders that we're interviewing for these different roles, I like giving them context because I never want a candidate to come in and be surprised. And we'll share. And I've gotten so many comments as of late from different leaders going, wow, you really understand the business. Okay, that scares the heck out of me because now I'm going to go back to the question you just asked. There are not many of us and there are a lot of young folks that are without the experience. You know, I don't know who's listening to this, but what I will say is put aside age. I remember when I started, you know, doing all the consulting work and I was in my, what, late 20s, and I looked like I was 15 for the longest time, um, and never got taken seriously. Never. It was so frustrating. But so for me, it's got— know your business. No, no, how everything, how everything connects. Don't just say I don't know or pretend. Really, you know, it just, just is You know, just take the time to really understand how that person fits and how what you're doing impacts the business.

So you're hearing, 'I don't know,' a lot?

Yes, yes. Or you'll have to have that conversation with the manager. No, come on now. I will tell you, I'm really blessed. I have an amazing leadership team. And they understand their business. And I, I love it. Like, I stinkin' love it because they understand the impact that what they're doing has. And I've got, I've got leaders who are in my 30s, and I've got leaders who are as old as me. So I—

right, so this is not an age thing, it's an experience thing.

It's an experience. It's taking the time. If you're going to be in recruiting It's, are you a— again, are you a fulfillment organization? And if you're a fulfillment, treat it like fulfillment, and that's what you're going to be. Are you a talent advisory organization? Or if that's what you strive to be, you have to really understand, you have to know your business and what you're in.

Get to know it.

Get to know it. Get to know your business.

And you know, The other thing is recruiting is a great place to be to get to know a business, so you really don't have any excuse not to.

Oh yeah, like, and here's the other thing I would say is understand the work you do, the time it takes. Go take a Lean Six Sigma class and understand the whole concept of time in motion and build time in motion calculators that help you look at the work that you're doing and where you need to put your your team's emphasis. Is it a sourcing issue or is it a screening issue? It's either one or the other. Depending upon my country, I'm going to tell you that. But understand, get educated in Lean Six Sigma. Go take a product management program. Understand— oh my gosh, think about it. Product managers start from concept to driving something to live. What do you think we do when we run college recruitment programs, executive recruitment programs, employee referral, internal mobility, diversity hiring? When you run a program, you've got to run it from concept. Yeah, do it. And it's so cool. It's like, these are the things—

super advice.

Get just good. It's good meaty stuff. And it gives you frameworks.

To gain. We've had a few guests on the show talk about like certifications, um, but I think beyond the certificate, you know, the, the, the license on your profile, what you're saying is it's the knowledge behind that. And program management, project management, um, product management, all the PMs, I think that's, that's really good. I've always said, you know, how do you feel about this? I've always said the recruiting— people are like, oh, recruiting sales, or recruiting is marketing. I don't think recruiting is sales. I don't think recruiting is marketing. I think recruiting is project management.

It is, it is. And you, and you know what, those that can't project manage or organize their thoughts, this is becoming more, um, I don't want to say justify yourself. There's a layer of that. This is more of a, about accountability. And, you know, I had an HR leader say to me Hey, you know, the one thing about recruiting is it's probably really one of the highest measurable areas of HR. So people like touching it and feeling it and seeing it. But everybody knows recruiting. Everybody knows how to do recruiting. But when you add data to it and you add, you know, just give it a little more context, it gives you that credibility.

I love that. So I get a product management or program management or project— I mean, product management is what's got that product. Yeah, there's a bunch of those out there. There's a bunch of product management courses.

Do product management. It gets you thinking differently. Think about it. Recruiters have to do market research, right? Don't they? And they have to know then how does it apply to the program. Well, then you've got the buyer.

How much will they pay? What are the— those are all— yeah, it's the same thing. It's—

yeah, right. You got a budget. It's the same thing. And then think about it, you build your program and then you have to release it. Well, you have to do a whole marketing campaign and then you got to measure the success. Well, you're doing the same thing. It's great. It's amazing.

That is really good. I like that. Um, there was an organization, uh, that they did— it's the PMP. Product Management Professional. I don't remember the name of the organization, but that's one that I've heard of, um, a few times now. And, uh, what's the name of the company that does that?

Pragmatic— the name of the company does an amazing— yes, they do a stinking amazing product set of product management. And then they do one, I don't know if they still do it anymore, but I remember on my TA operations team, when I had the tech underneath me, um, I put them through a program that says Requirements That Work and really understanding how to gather business requirements. Um, and like right now I have a good, amazing TA ops person and she is just amazing at dissecting and building out requirements. Like, those are the awesome skills that through a transformation are going to get you through. And then from a recruiting, if you are a desk recruiter, know your business. My brother, my brother, my little brother.

Oh no.

And no, he is, he is a technical recruiter. And so he, he had to go through this whole interview process for this new gig that he has this new. And he's been there now for about 6 months. And what, what's amazing is he had an interview with the CEO, and, um, it's an educational learning company. But what, what gave him the leg up was he understood the technology.

He's technical, right?

He understood the tech, and he understood the right candidates, and he understood Do you know that it was so important that the CEO interviewed him? And I was like, you go. And he got hired and he got a really, really good salary and he just got a nice bonus. And I'm just so proud of him because— but what he's doing differently is digging in. He, as a recruiter, he knows his world. He knows he's taking the time to understand. He's communicating. He's asking lots questions. He understands how it fits, and he's pushing a little, you know, he's driving the process, right?

So he's listening and processing and feeding it back, um, and showing that he's listened.

That's good.

Yep.

Yeah. So transformation means different things for where you sit. It's not just about, you know, people who run this recruiting thing, this thing we call recruiting. It's It's the recruiter themselves. How do you engage?

Wow. Well, Tracy, I think we— I learned a lot. I love that PMP idea. When I was at Fiserv, I helped a lot of hires for PMPs, so I should have known. But I love how you connected that. There's two things that I always ask my guests, that every guest, even my longtime Friends has to go through. Every guest has to go through. First of those is who should be our next guest?

Oh, wow. You know, I would ask a business person, and I turn the tables and say, hey, how do you look at your recruiting organization?

Have somebody in mind? Do you, do you have somebody in mind?

No. I wonder. I haven't really thought about it. Yeah, but don't take it—

no, no, I see. I don't think so. By a business person, you're talking about the business, the, the recipient of the recruiting, uh, efforts, right? Yeah, the customer, if you will.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And do it by functional area, right? Have somebody from tech and have somebody from finance, because, you know, to me, who are your biggest biggest struggles. Like, every time I've been in recruiting, like, every, every year, finance and legal are always my problem children. They're, they're special.

Yeah, that's, that's right. Yeah, I've had more, um, more deviations from process and exceptions from both of those than any other department.

Totally, completely. So you know what, wouldn't it be fun to get Your worst offenders on the call.

I know exactly who to call now. Yeah, that's good advice. All right, I'm gonna need to think about that one and go back and invite some of those folks. The second question is, a lot of folks listen to the show later. You know, talk about asynchronously. It's not everybody's available at Friday morning, afternoon. And I want to, I want to end the show by giving them something to think about. So a thought provoking question that they should ask themselves. Leave us with something to ask ourselves. Could be about anything we talked about, or it could be something new.

Oh, you know, I would say— oh wow, okay, now you stumped me. You've stumped me. You know, I would say when you need a timeout, take a timeout, because it's—

so the question is, ask yourself if you need a timeout.

Ask yourself if you need a timeout and give yourself permission. Give yourself a break, because right now during transformation, sometimes you just need a timeout and go take a walk in the park.

Yeah, I say, I say be kind to yourself. But I think that's, that is how to be kind to yourself. Yeah, that's good.

Yeah, exactly.

How are you giving yourself permission to, to take a timeout? And by that, I don't mean go stand in the corner, look at the wall. I mean like actually a break, right? Like a mental health break. Well, it's very beautiful having you on the show. Thank you so much for taking your, taking time out of your really busy schedule, I'm sure. And as I mentioned before, if you come back to Atlanta, I'd love to entertain you and hang out. And, um, yeah, thanks a lot. I really appreciate it.

Gosh, thanks for having me. This has been great, and I've loved seeing the OGs. Yeah, that was awesome. Hopefully anybody else got a big kick out of it too, right?

Well, next week, if you want to tune in next Friday, we have Tim Sackett. Uh, Tim and I shared a table recently at, uh, at an event in Toronto and had some fun conversations. So I said, you know what, this, this needs to go on the show. So, um, come back for that. And until then, folks, um, be kind to yourselves and take a break.

Thanks, everybody.