Why Referrals Still Reign Supreme and How To get Them with David Jaramillo

Hey, hey, hey! Happy Friday, August 22nd, 2025. You are live on Shelly's Alley, the show to learn about talent acquisition strategy from the minds of some of our greatest practitioners. And today we have with us David Jaramillo from Dallas, Texas.

Said it perfectly.

A fellow, a fellow Colombian. And, you know, he's currently leading talent acquisition for a wellness company, right? Am I getting that right?

That's right. That's right. Destination Wellness.

Destination Wellness.

Yeah.

So David has over— That's right. So, yeah, thanks for joining. We've known each other for a long time and I'm glad we were able to finally to get you on the show here. Just diving right in, the one thing that I think is just really unique about your approach and your style is that in this day and age, you are still a fervent supporter of referrals as a source of candidates. And not necessarily, for those of you that are out there thinking, oh, employee referrals, everybody does that. Well, there's employee referrals. But then there's also non-employee referrals. And that's the old school skill of, you know, getting names from the people that you talk to, getting, you know, names from, from candidates as they're being, as they're onboarding, and things like that. So, in your, I guess, in your own words, that's a weird way to put it. But, you know, You've said, who do you know is still the most powerful recruiting tool. But nowadays with AI and automated searches, hyper-targeted ads, why do referrals— first of all, why are they still relevant? And more importantly, why do they beat out even the best technology?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'll start with that phrase, right? Who do you know, right? It was imprinted in us. From my old agency days. Yeah, WDYK. We, we all, we had it as kind of an acronym, uh, from my, from my old, old agency days when I started, uh, many, many years ago. So that became the mantra. And I, I kind of compare it to restaurants or going to hotels or destinations, right? You know, if you're talking to your friends about a particular restaurant, or they're telling you about a particular restaurant or place they've been to, you're likely going to take that with more validity than maybe something you've read online, right? Um, or you'll go to TripAdvisor or something like that and you'll look for all the ratings and reviews because people are telling you about it. So, you know, essentially that's kind of a virtual referral, but you absolutely will pay much more attention to someone telling you, oh my God, Shelley, this was an amazing Italian place, let me tell you why you need to go. Type of thing.

I mean, yeah, it's like, you know, before the age of influencers, our influencers were our, our neighbors, our colleagues, our peers. That's where we, you know, we heard about the word of mouth, and it's still very much alive. It's just, you know, a little bit more electronic, but we still ask our friends on 100%, you know, yeah, yeah, what's, what's a good this, what's a good that. Or we create, you know, or they went there. So now we need to go there because we want to experience it. And, you know, out of camaraderie or jealousy or whatever, but absolutely. But you know, it's funny though, what you said, if you hear a recommendation from a friend for like a restaurant or hotel or vacation, you get all excited about it. But a lot of times what happens is you hear about the bad experiences.

That too. Absolutely.

Don't ever go here. This place is terrible. You don't like that.

So, but anyways, yeah, I was just gonna say, I mean, that, that also there's validity in that as well, for what I used to call backdoor references, right? So maybe someone has connected with you or is interested in your job. And you know, someone that used to work with that person. Right? So there's your backdoor ref check, right? Now I'm actually doing the reverse referrals, like, hey, what do you know about this person, right? Or, hey, I think you might have worked with them, or they worked on your team 5+ years ago or 2+ years ago, you know, do you, do you have any information on them? Or, you know, he's applying for this position, any thoughts, right? You know, type of thing. You know, those are also helpful as well, in some cases. So, you know, it definitely helps both from the candidate perspective as well as from the company, right, that's doing the hiring as well. You know, ultimately, it's— we're hiring people, right? You know, we're not— I like to say we're not hiring widgets. These aren't machines, right? I mean, yes, there's—

they don't stay put.

Yes, right.

Yeah, we sometimes don't like where they end up.

Exactly, exactly. But ultimately, I have to, you know, bring individuals on. And in my line of work, what we're doing here in hospital mentality. I, I can't have a massage therapist do work remotely. I can't have a server, right, you know, do this from their house, or a housekeeper, right, or a guest services person. I mean, sorry, you know, they have to be on site every day. You can't do it, you know, part-time or partially type of thing. So, um, you know, especially in this line of work, it's absolutely critical that we know the person, that we get to know them, and hopefully, um, you know, they've got a network as well. That old phrase, your network is your network, right? Uh, W-O-R-T-H, right? Your net worth is your network type of thing. I think it certainly applies. Um, and now it's technically a lot easier with all the tools, right? I mean, you can build your network up very, very quickly, um, with everything that's out there. So even people that say, well, Dave, I, you know, I'm just not a really good networker right, or I don't go to events or whatnot. It's like, yeah, but you're on social media or you have some kind of a presence out there, right? So you've got to have some kind of connection. If you work somewhere, I'm sure you knew folks, so maybe stay connected to them. And it doesn't always have to be on LinkedIn, right? I mean, you and I both know that there's all kinds of other ways, right?

Right, right, right. I mean, I think, you know, my, my opinion is honestly recruiting without referrals is like fishing without bait. You'll catch something, but, you know, may not be what you wanted. It might take you a lot.

Absolutely. Yeah, no, absolutely.

How do— what, what did most recruiters, or a lot of recruiters, still get wrong when it comes to that? What is, you know, give us some of the caveats to avoid.

Yeah, I, I think they, they, uh, a lot of times they are thinking, to your point, using the, the fishing analogy, well, if I fish, I only want that particular kind of fish, right? Right. I don't want squid or octopus or something else, right? And so they think that referrals have to be so absolutely perfect, right? And then they dismiss any referrals. That's one thing I've seen a lot of is a lot of folks just dismiss referrals. They're like, that's not really what I wanted. Right. So they're like, hey, there's no value in that.

Well, that's a really interesting point. And let me tell you a story about that. So I was running, I established and ran the referral program for a $2 billion unicorn. You know, it— they had an employee referral program that was based on reward, and they just assumed everybody knew that there was a reward. And some people did. In fact, there are a couple people that actually made like double their pay in referral rewards because they did, they did so many of them. Yeah. And they were just, like you said, very well networked. But it was never planned. It was just kind of like, hey, we're gonna offer some money and they'll let people know. So when I came in, um, I established this whole process and made it part of the onboarding. And we actually, during their first day of onboarding, I went through a 1-hour spiel myself personally with everybody on the importance of it. And I actually gave them a tool to share. So, not only did I tell them about the reward, so now they know about it, but I also went into like, here's what we're looking for. Here's how you present somebody, you know, and things like that. And then gave them the opportunity to share some of their contacts with a tool that we created to, you know, specifically for that. And the point that I always made, I always made, and this is the reason you just said this triggered, don't think about, like I would say, don't think about who's looking for work. We don't necessarily need that. I mean, yeah, sure, if you know someone that's looking for work, by all means. But what we're looking for are who are some 'Who are some of the best people you worked with? Who are some of the people that if you had a job opening, you would hire?' And not only do they not need to— we don't need them to be job seekers right now because they could be in the future. We won't reach out to them necessarily right away unless you want us to, but we want to know who they are so that, you know, when the time comes. And then I said, and these is the other thing, is it's not important that they're looking. It also doesn't matter what job they do, right? These are people who you would recommend, people who you think would like it here, people who you think, you know, and we may not we don't have any jobs for them right now, but we might in the future. And you might think it's not a fit right now. But so it was like, it was like, don't think about just active job seekers without explaining what that whole is, you know. And don't think about like, what job do I recommend them for? Just say, this is a strong person. They should work here because they're, they're awesome. And I enjoyed working with them and they would make a good team member. And then we would eventually sort it out. Not everybody was— not every referral that we got was a possible candidate, but now we had a database of, you know, these contacts. So sorry, yeah, you just—

I mean, no, no, no, no, you hit it on the spot. You actually made me think of a couple other things. So when you're talking about referrals, I think to kind of come back to the original question, the mistake a lot of people make is they want that targeted referral, right? Especially perfect, right? And in some cases, it might be a second or third degree before you find that person, right? So to your point, who is in your network that is going to be worth maybe reaching out to? Because maybe they might know somebody, uh, as well. And then there's those aha moments where you're like, you know what, I wasn't looking for this person, but damn, they're really good for something else. And so now all of a sudden you might have two potential referrals, you know, to start looking at. They might give you another name. Uh, as well, it reminds me of my old days when on the agency side when I had to do reference checks, right? That was the first thing everybody did.

Reference checks, for me, that was always my best source of referrals. Exactly.

And that was my best—

check into a referral. By the way, I turned every reference check into a referral for other— for other referrals.

Yeah.

So that was—

yeah, that was, uh, I'm from— I'm from— I'm gonna— I'm gonna give them— I'm gonna give them a shout out. I'm giving, uh, Robert Half is where— is where I got it. Uh, they had really good training. And that was it.

You know, they still do. Yeah.

So you, you were either, uh, you know, getting a proper reference from them, but really either you were maybe getting them as a potential candidate or getting other ref— or, or other leads from them, or maybe a job lead, you know, from— you're always trying to close for something else. And so kind of in that same vein, right, if I'm getting a referral from someone, well, maybe they might know other people who know other people, right? Or maybe they are a potential candidate for something else that I might have. And so I think a lot of folks were so hyper-focused on just finding that, you know, that needle in a haystack. You know, I need to find the right fish. It's like, okay, yeah, it's a little bit of extra time. You might have to spend 10, 15 minutes or, you know, call them or whatnot, but it is worth it. Uh, and I think that's where that differentiation happens. Um, and then to your other point, you mentioned something else about, you know, launching a referral program. We had the same thing at a prior company, and what happened was we were getting tons of referrals from like the same 5 or 10% of people. So it's great that you got a great network, but it's the same people over and over again. So we had to kind of institute some guardrails around it, and we made it more of a gamification strategy, right? We're like, okay, we'll make it out of point system. If you give us a name, that's great. If you tell us what they're actually interested in, be specific. Give us that. Did you give us the contact details? And then did we actually contact them? Did they interview? Did they get hired?

Right.

So there's kind of a point structure for all that. And then it made it kind of a fun gaming system so that people can see sort of where they were on the leaderboard, right, as far as references overall. So that was kind of cool to be able to do that. And then we decreased all the junkie, you know, I call them the junkie, the junkie references or the referrals, I should say, where you had these referrals went down in terms of quantity, but the quality ended up going up, right, as well. And we were not necessarily paying, right?

I mean, I know you mentioned kind of having, you know, you don't have to. Yeah, I found that you don't have to. No.

Yeah. Yeah, I realized that too. So here in hospitality, I'll share this, you know, we do have some positions where they are a little bit tougher, just based on geography, or just the market itself is fairly tight for certain hospitality roles. Hospitality still getting better post-COVID, but still very competitive, and people want to keep their best folks. So referrals are a big, big tool. Every once in a while we might do, um, kind of referral fees, but it hasn't been kind of the main driver for it.

A lot of non-employee referrals, you can't really do fees because you're— yeah, you, you'd be you'd have to set up some sort of system, right? Because with an employee, you can add things to their paycheck and then, you know, the taxes come out and everything. But with a non-employee, um, you have to figure out a way to do it as a gift or something that's not going to impact their taxes, because otherwise you have to collect, you know, W-2 or— oh yeah, yeah, whatever. So we, um, yeah, we, we used a, uh this was not at the unicorn I was talking about, but another job prior to that where we used the platform that's not around anymore that would actually process that. So they, they handled— they invoiced us for the, for the net sum, and they handled out all the payments and all that because there's paperwork and all that involved.

Yeah.

But, um, but you don't necessarily have to. So tell me a little bit more about non-employee referrals. What can recruiters do? And I guess just for the uninitiated, break down what that really means. You know, you're not asking your employees for referrals. You're asking people that may be not, you know, even candidates.

Yeah.

So how do you do that?

Yeah. So, you know, one of the— I've got a couple of different group distribution lists, whether it's via email or text. And sometimes it's just as simple as WDYK. Hey gang, who do you know, right? I'm, I'm looking for this role, and I don't really give them much more than maybe a job title, a location, to a very tight network that I have, right? People that know, okay, we share best ideas, best practices, or, uh, it's a group of friends or whatnot. But I know that every once in a while I can just ping them on something. So it could be as simple as that, right? That kind of starts the ball rolling. And then hopefully you might get, you know, a bite out of that. And then you want to follow up. That's the big thing, right, is just make sure to follow up on any kind of referrals from non-employees because these people don't have to do this for you. You know, getting an employee referral, okay, there's a little bit of, uh, you know, potential carrot, right, you know, in it for them.

Both work the same company and so on.

Yeah, yeah. So those recommendations, uh, from you know, those people that don't have a vested interest, right, in that organization, I would say definitely jump on those. Now, they might not be, again, the perfect ones, but you definitely want to follow up on them. And again, it can be as simple as, hey, I am searching for XYZ. Do you know someone that's looking in your network?

That's, yeah, that's better. Because when you ask people, who do you know, I mean, I personally, if somebody said, hey, Charlie, who do you know, I would like, my mind would just go blank.

Right.

It's the opposite of like, you know, I wouldn't be like, oh, let me tell you all, you know, I know a lot of people, but I would just go like, well, in fact, this happens a lot when people ask me who I would recommend. Hey, Shelley, do you know any, you know, any speakers that you might, you know, you might recommend for this event that I'm doing? Because I speak at a lot of events. And so, you know, they're like, hey, do you know anybody? Who do you know? And then they ask, who do you know? And I'm kind of like, oh, Now I gotta start like, about what? Do I, do I need to evaluate if they're good? I don't know if they're a good speaker, but it's better if they say, at least for me, if they say, Shelly, do you know anybody that can talk about semantic search? That then I'm like, oh yeah, that's it, you know. So it's easier for me to— doesn't have to be especially like a narrow specialization, but just give me an idea. Yeah, or, or even just anchor it to a location. Hey Shelly, do you know anybody for an event in Atlanta, then I can at least narrow my, my Rolodex down.

Of course. Yeah. And I think to your point, I think that's the mistake that people are also making, right? Recruiters will just throw out, who do you know? It's like, no, no, no, no, you can't just ask it like that. You need to be specific, right? So, hey, I'm looking for— yeah, I'm looking for a talent acquisition senior specialist in San Francisco who's got a focus in AI and machine language learning. No more than 3 years because it's an entry-level position. Hey, now all of a sudden you, you focused in and you're like, okay, it's not a senior leadership role. Uh, they're gonna be in the Bay Area, which means they're probably going to be hybrid or maybe working remote from time to time. And, uh, they need to be focused in AI. Okay, let me tell me, let me think about that for just a second. That is a huge one. I have a, I have a distribution group that I'm with, and there's like 2,000 TA leaders or something on it. And every once in a while, they'll just kind of throw those topics out there. And the people that get the most sort of referrals— and again, there's, there's no vested interest in sharing names, right? That you're just helping someone out. But the people that get the most responses are the ones that are very specific, right? Location, title, um, bullets around the role itself, um, maybe some perks around the position as well, right? It works remotely, you travel, you've got XYZ budget, you're in charge of so many people, the company's growing, you know, whatever it might be. Now all of a sudden that jogs someone's memory. Or industry, right? I need someone from this particular industry. You're like, yes, I do know somebody from there type of thing. And that for me has been a huge one. So, you know, you mentioned at the beginning, I've worked in a variety of different industries. So right now it's hospitality, but I've worked in finance, financial services. I've done it for engineering roles as well. I've done it for sales also, and a couple of other spots, and certainly in recruiting, just agency folks, you know, recruiting sales. So, you know, I've got a pretty wide net when it comes to the network, but you have to be specific. To your point, you can't just say, well, Dave, who do you know that's a really good recruiter? I mean, that's a lot of people, you know, on that, and I probably wouldn't be able to just name off someone off the top of my head, right? Yeah, you got to be a little bit more specific. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. A little bit more specific, but not like way down in the grid.

No, no, no, no. Yeah, don't give me a job description, right?

Right. Yeah, here, here, do my job for me and match a candidate. By the way, let me know how much they're looking to make and, uh, when they can start. Like, okay, yeah, buddy, just Just give me the top 3 bullets, right?

And then, you know, the ones that I always, uh, know are probably going to be decent leads are when they start biting back, like, what's the comp on it? Where— how often do they need to work? Or, I might have somebody, do you know— do you know if they need to be on site all the time or what? I'm like, okay, this one's definitely worth chasing down, uh, type of thing. So, you know, those referrals, if they show a genuine interest in your request, I think you'd certainly wanna chase those down as well. You know, and you don't wanna do it after the fact, right? If you're on the hunt for a job, I always say, you know, you should have built those relationships prior, right? I can't just reach out to Shelly 'cause I met him one time 10 years ago at a networking event.

Yeah, hey, open your Rolodex for me and—

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. So, you know, I think you have to definitely build those relationships before you need them.

That's true. The trust is— yeah, they're not gonna— I think it was Zig Ziglar that said, people will listen to you if they like you, but they'll do business with you if they trust you.

Absolutely. Yeah, 100%. And, you know, it's in this era of webinars, uh, and now post-COVID, of course, you know, we were going to industry events regularly. People are going back, you know, to physically meet. I mean, take the opportunity, take the time to do it. You know, in the recruiting space, there are tons of events, whether locally— I mean, here in North Texas, we do have a whole bunch. We got a great network here. Uh, we're expanding into Austin next year, so I'm looking at— Austin's got a very strong—

do some driving back and forth.

So that'll have to be some driving. Yeah, I'm already looking at a couple of trips for the next 2 months down there, but they've got a very strong recruiting network that I want to start to be a part of, right? Um, obviously a lot of industry events throughout the year. I know Rec Fest is coming up. here pretty soon.

And then, yeah, I'm gonna be there. I'm gonna be there.

You'll be out there?

Okay.

So, you know, for somebody that's thinking about, well, you know, how do I expand my network, or I don't get a chance to go out very often, that's a great way to go, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I would say, you know, some of those are, are worth going, uh, locally out here. TalonNet Live, I know, happens quite a bit, um, from Craig Fisher.

And then just who do you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wanted to, um, I wanted to switch tacks a little bit and talk about something that we've talked about before that is kind of near and dear to me, and that's metrics versus meaning. You've built up TA scorecards, you've built up KPI dashboards, and I think a lot of folks don't really kind of know the difference between a scorecard and a dashboard. But you've done it with different, you know, companies, different industries. So a little bit of everything, that variety that you have, What have you seen in that journey that is a measurement that executives will obsess over that actually misleads them?

Ooh, great question. I mean, what was it Mark Twain said? There's lies, damn lies, and there's statistics, right?

Yeah, but they'll obsess about this one thing. Like, I'll give you mine and hopefully it's not the same as yours, but like, Time to fill, you know, time to fill is just such bullcrap. It doesn't even— and I don't, I don't think it registers with people how useless it is as a metric. Because things like, for example, um, mandatory waiting periods, uh, background checks in, in some countries, and even here, in depending on the role, you have to wait a certain time before you, you know, can switch jobs. And so there's that part that you can't control and people are gonna argue, "Oh yeah, but you could take that out and account for it." Sure, you could, but there's also other things. There's so much in the whole workflow from the job posting to, you know, where do you start? Do you start measuring when the job is approved? Or when it's posted? Or when it's required? And when do you end? Do you end when you have enough applicants? Do you end when you have an offer? Is it a verbal offer or a written offer? Do you end when the actual person starts? Or do you end 90 days after? Time to fill is so hard. And it also doesn't really mean anything because if you do the right, if you have the right hire, but it took you a little bit longer, most managers will tell you that's fine. And when I've had these conversations with managers that are in pain, about filling a position and, you know, the company's all up about time to fill. The manager, given the choice of quality, right, speed, quality, speed, or cost, usually they'll be willing to wait to have better quality and maybe even lower the cost. But even when cost is not the object or the objection, it's still— they're willing to wait because they'd rather have a good hire So I don't know, for me that's kind of like the fake one. It's like, it's—

yeah, I would say, yeah, I mean, I'll address kind of that time, the TTF, right, the time to fill. I think whether you're an agency, whether you're in-house, right, that's the standard metric that most, most shops will typically have. And it's because it's so easy, right? I think most ATSs or systems will probably be able to calculate. But to your point, how is the calculation done? Different at every shop. I have done implementations from Workday to iSims to Paycom, and you can calculate, you can change the measurement how that time to fill is done. So to your point, is it when they open the rec? Is it when you post the rec? Is it when they pass the background check? Is it when the butt is in the seat? Right. I mean, I use that BIS metric, right? I don't care when they accepted the offer or when the background checks start. Did they actually show up? Is the butt in the seat? That is the day they started, not, you know, they accepted the offer or they signed on 3 weeks ago type of thing.

So, but do you have another— like, is there another metric that you think a lot of executives ask for that you're just like, come on guys, not this?

You know, I think— I mean, that's certainly a big one. I think the one of the ones that kind of gets me a little bit bothersome sometimes is sort of those applicant-to-interview ratios when you start looking at kind of what that funnel looks like. Okay, they might talk about that. Yeah. So, you know, in our, in our world, right, you know, you've got all your different stages, right, in that funnel that goes from, you know, application to screen to interview to onsite to offer, and then of course, to hire, right. So I have seen where some managers will say, well, geez, that's, that's a pretty high metric, you know, that we're looking at, you know, that's, that's a lot of applicants to interviews that you're, that you are having to go through, can we drop that down, you know, kind of thing. I'm like, look, yeah, it doesn't matter, right? I mean, if we have the time to do it, there's automated tools that can go through that, like automated one-way video interview tools, and that number is kind of driving that metric as well. So I have seen managers kind of get a little bit stuck on that in the past. So it doesn't really matter, right?

Ultimately, they want to know that higher number, right?

So You know, it does help us, right? Are we—

it helps to steer things. Yeah, yeah, it helps us here.

But I don't like it when, when maybe a manager, to your point, you know, a senior leader is just so focused on that number. I'm like, look, it doesn't matter. It's like, it's like making a, you know, a meal or something. Like, you don't care about how much of the ingredients were actually used for the end dish that you, that you have. You just care about the end dish, right?

Yeah, who cares?

You know, I mean, yeah, it might have taken 6 eggs, one broke, you know, so now you're right into your own, you know, kind of thing. I think that one, I think that one is certainly a bad one. I think one of the ones that is probably more effective that people don't focus in on is, um, sourcing channels, right? We tend to just— oh yeah, we tend to just kind of say, look hired. Let's, you know, did we get hired? Did we get hired? It's like, yeah, but are we focused on just one channel?

Are we dependent on one source?

Oh, we just depend on that one source. And all of a sudden you realize, ooh, if that one source goes away, right? Uh, I call it the Big Red Bus Theory. The Big Red Bus hits us tomorrow, we lose that account, or we lose, you know, that contact, and we don't have that, that source, that channel. What happens to us? And I've seen that over and over again. They're just, they just think that's the, you know, the sweet spot. We get all of our candidates through LinkedIn, or through Indeed, or an old school name, Monster, or Dice back in the day, we get all our IT candidates through Dice. I used to work at a shop that was their big thing. I'm like, look, you can't, you cannot depend on this thing forever and ever.

Well, they've got great rates, or the contract, but eventually they go out of business.

Yes, exactly. They'll go out of business.

So, you know, change the rules, or— right.

Or, I mean, the candidates just naturally gravitate to, you know, other areas, right? Uh, they'll start following the flock. Where, where should I be, right, from a candidate perspective? So, you know, we, we keep hearing, you know, Indeed may be going down, or a lot of folks just aren't out there anymore, but it's still the 800-pound gorilla, certainly within the hospitality space, right?

Right, right, right. It also depends on the industry. It definitely— it depends on the industry.

Yeah, I mean, if 5 was when I was hiring in IT, you never went there, you know, kind of thing. I mean, you did check it, but if we're hiring for senior-level IT roles, it wasn't something that, you know, we were naturally gravitating to. Um, you know, a good recruiter will know which pond's efficient to, right, where to source and where to find it.

So anyways, yeah, yeah, sorry, go ahead, finish up.

No, to get back to the question, I mean, yeah, sourcing channel effectiveness, I think, is going to be sourcing channel effectiveness and the ratio of I don't know, submittals to interlay, whatever the, the submittal accept ratio, I guess.

Yes.

Yeah, I think, I think those are going to be some big ones.

I mean, that's more for measuring our own qual— like, that's the— in my opinion, that's the difference between a scorecard and a dashboard. I think of a— and this may be completely wrong, but hey, I'm entitled to my opinion, it's my show. So, um, I think of a dashboard as, as you would a dashboard in a car. Right? The dashboard is for the driver.

Yep.

Not for the passenger. The driver needs to know about the velocity, the direction, the fuel, the air pressure, the, you know, the driver needs to do that because they're steering. They're making the decisions on, you know, where to go, how to get there, stuff like that. But that strategy, as in, where are we going? That strategy The driver doesn't necessarily come up with a strategy. You know, you may be both. You might be both. But you may also just be the driver. So to me, the dashboard is for the driver unless the driver is also the strategist. Then it's for both. But typically for that. And the scorecard is for the passenger. That's the strategist. That's the one determining where we're going to go. And on the scorecard, what they want to know is not how much time or how many interviews or how many candidates or what the recipe is or whatever. What they want to know is, are we going to achieve our sales target? Are we going to achieve our revenue goal? And are we— and to do that, will we have enough people? Will we have the people we need? How close to it? You know, how much more do we need? Like, tell me that. Tell me Tell me if you're sure that we're going to be able to fill all these jobs, then great. But if not, what do you need to make that happen? That's what I want to know. That's what's in the scorecard. And that's different than, you know, a lot of times you'll see these green light— I've seen green light, yellow light, red light. Um, man, I gotta tell you, nothing pisses me the fuck off more than that. It's like, first of all, I'm colorblind, and so I always have a hard time with that. I have to literally look at the source code or use a screen color picker, you know, sometimes just to figure it out, you know, because like, whatever. But the whole point of it is like, okay, so that, that's telling us, you know, start, stop, continue kind of thing. Yeah, I get that. So that's overly simplistic, but that doesn't really give us actionable— just like my scorecard is actionable. Yeah, like my scorecard says for the board or for the chief executive, you know, ranks. My scorecard says, we are running at about 70% of where we need to be for these roles. And what we're seeing in the market is that it's going to take longer or more money than what we expected. So, I don't have to explain it. If they ask, I can dive in. I can dive in and give them numbers and all. But I don't have to explain it beyond, We need more time. We need more money. Or we're fine, right? And if we need more time or we need more money, here's what we need. And I have a plan. And then they go, okay, go and execute on the plan. Or they'll ask questions. But that's really what they want. Anything more than that, and I've seen them like eyes glazed over, uh-huh, uh-huh, especially in virtual meetings.

You hit it. I mean, I think there's there's that very fine distinction between those dashboards and scorecards, like you said, right? The dashboard is— I like your analogy, right? Driver versus passengers. So to me, the dashboard is what's happening right now, right? That real-time, near real-time trends and insights. Whereas the scorecard is, are we on track? Goals versus outcomes, past performance versus targets, you know, things like that. But the mistake people make is they only have a dashboard or they use the dashboard to identify the goals and outcomes. We're like, oh no, you know, this is, this is just a data point, right? Like, this is right now. We cannot start making long-term decisions off of this existing dashboard. Like, this data point, this is going to change, you know. This, this chart is going to be totally different tomorrow, you know, type of thing, next week. And so we can't be, you know, making, well, that's a 1-year decision that we're going to have off of this one chart, you know, that got pulled yesterday by the analyst, you know, type of thing. And I've been that analyst, you know, I've been, I've been the person to build the dashboard or, uh, figure out, extrapolate. Well, Dave, from there, can you go ahead and pull more insights? I'm like, well, yeah, I can, but this is different than a scorecard. Like, we want lots of data points, you know, we want a more historical, and we want to compare it to past performance.

Oh yeah, metrics are absolutely worthless if you don't have a comparison.

Yeah, I mean, and I think, and I think that's the problem is, you know, hard enough, like I said, to get the dashboard, but then people are making these long-term decisions off of just that. I was like, you know, it's not, not always the best.

That's funny. I have in, in my metrics presentation, I just, it just popped in my, in, into my head. I have this, this black and white, you know, old, old-timey kind of photo of clearly a manager, you know, dressed in business attire, and they're jumping off of the desk. They're jumping off of the desk holding a bunch of papers in their hand, like, you know, leaping like that, and they're leaping in the air. And the caption— this is the point that I'm making with this image in my visualizations in my PowerPoint— the caption is a measurement is a point in time. For example, I'm flying, and there's the manager, you know, right, right? So they're, they're like floating in midair. So I'm flying is the caption for that, right? That's, that's a point in time. How did we get there and what happens afterward are two completely different things. Absolutely.

Yes, yes.

Two seconds later, they're flat on the floor papers scattered everywhere and it's a mess. So a metric— people use this all the time. They confuse measurement with metric. They say metric, but what they mean is measurement. So number of hires is a measurement, not a metric.

Yeah, agreed.

A metric has to have, you know, number of hires this month compared to the same month last year, number of hires, you know, in comparison, like number of hires in comparison to number of jobs, like percentage of hires for that. Because just number of hires is no different than— imagine if I'm on my dashboard and I'm driving, right? And the speedometer says I'm going 300 miles an hour. Well, that could be because I just fell off a cliff.

Right?

It doesn't tell me 300 miles an hour. You would look at that and go, wow, that's some great speed. Unless, of course, the outcome is not what you're looking for, right?

Or 300 sounds fast until I'll tell you, oh, by the way, you're in an airplane, which is supposed to be going 600 miles an hour, not 300.

So yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. So no.

And to go back to your, you know, the whole original time to fill metric as well. I've worked in teams where some team members would have had 200 hires, right, in a quarter. Well, guess what they're hiring for? Entry-level positions, call center type roles, you know, roles, high turnover, right? So their time to fill is super tiny, right? The other person was hiring for senior executives. Well, they only hired maybe 10 in the quarter, right? And, um, their time to fill is 120 days, right, at the very least, kind of thing. Does that mean they're really bad or one's better than the other? No, it's totally different. And then to your point, how was it quarter over quarter, year over year? Uh, you know, how are they versus industry averages? Uh, you know, what's the percentages? And so yeah, the, the idea that, you know, a dashboard number, right, a data point is your metric, I think you're right, gets a lot of people into trouble as well. So I'm never of the type when I just say, how many hires did you make last year? I don't really care.

It doesn't matter, right? Let's talk a little bit about something else that I know you're pretty big on. And the question is culture fit or culture add. You've been in a variety of different industries. Hospitality, which is a lot about, you know, customer-facing and culture fit. Finance, which is more analytical. IT. Healthcare, which is, you know, you've got bedside versus non-bedside. So, across all these really different environments, how do you draw the line between hiring for culture fit, which can slide right into I like to call hiring PLUs or people like us. And now you're— now it's biased, right? So there's good and bad versus hiring for culture ad that may not be a fit, but it actually is complementary.

So yeah, that's a, that's a really— it's a, it's a, it's— I will tell you, there's not an easy answer, at least from my—

no, there isn't. But can you share an example where getting that wrong hurts the business and what would you do to prevent that?

Yeah, I've got a couple of examples.

You know, we—

yeah, at one shop, you know, we—

they—

I like your, your acronym PLUs, right? It was a lot of, we need PLUs, we need people like us, right? They come from the same industry or the same title, or I don't know this person, talking about referrals, right? Well, I don't have that person in my network. I don't know who that person is, right? That person's not like us, right? So they were looking for that culture fit. Or as we all know, right, that hiring manager comes back to you and says they just weren't a good fit, right? And you know what that means, right? It's like, I'm trying to find you a great candidate that's going to enhance your team or enhance your group. Somebody with offering different perspectives or experiences. No, we know what that means. They want somebody that will fit within the existing organizational values or the ways that they work because they want to keep that consistency.

Matchy-matchy, right?

They want to keep that easier team alignment, or they want to establish those certain norms, right, that they've got within their company. They're like, yeah, this person's not going to rock the boat, right? They— somebody from American Airlines loves to hire people from Delta, right, but not always from Southwest. You know, type of thing, just because they're slightly different how they operate. So yes, and it has come back to burn them in the butt because guess what? Now it was a groupthink. Now the team had to, you know, develop or create new products and new services. I'm thinking of a product management team. And because they all came from the same culture fit, guess what? They had a lot of stagnation when it came to advancing their product or making changes. You know, they all worked in waterfall method. I'm going to use that as an example, right, from an old school style. And they couldn't do a more faster iterative process, right, in terms of getting stuff out, new development, rapid development type stuff. And so guess what? They got left behind. The team dynamic was, well, we should try something new, but none of them had that, that new sort of mentality. So that culture fit definitely bit him in the butt, right? On the other side, I've seen it. I have personally been a part of— I've been hired into an organization where they purposefully said, David, you are not like our people. This where I'm at right here, right now. I did not have hospitality in my background, but I had everything else. And they said, we don't care that you don't have hospitality. We can teach you that. You have recruiting, you have the knowledge and the wherewithal of hiring from entry level all the way to C-suite. We want that perspective, and we want to grow. Like, we want to get better. We are going to grow. We can't keep doing the same things over and over the same way expecting a different result. So I was definitely a culture add. If I look at my, my team as it is right now, we all have a very diverse background, uh, from different industries.

We don't all just come from hospitality, which, yeah, which leads to a good diversity of thought. Now, there should be cultural alignment, but I think sometimes people make the mistake of, um, cultural alignment is essentially cultural mirroring. Like, you don't have to be from the same culture, but you have to be someone that would thrive in this culture, even if you're— you'll, you'll have a different perspective and it'll contribute, but you'll actually be able to thrive here. And so, you know, what you don't want is to hire for that diversity of culture and end up having that be like a problem for the person you hired or whatever because of, you know, clear clashes. Yeah, that's why I wanted to kind of distinguish that.

Yeah, no, I think so.

Yeah, I was gonna say, how do you— the point to follow up on that was how do you prevent that from happening? Or how could you?

I think you have to—

there's no easy answer.

Yeah, no, I— what I have done is I purposefully present candidates if I've obviously screened them and I've done my due diligence on them. I will purposefully present those individuals that may not be that culture fit, right? They might be that culture ad, but I'm going to explain to them why, you know, this person is right. So, you know, the wisdom, right? What's in it for me as the manager? Why do I need to talk to this person? What's going on with their background? And then if I can sort of get them over that hump, right, of their questions, then usually it's the, ah, I got it. Or it's, listen, we've hired the last 3 people, have all been, quote, fit for fit, and it didn't work out. You know, now this position is open again for, you know, 3 times in 18 months. So we probably should be shifting gears, you know, or looking elsewhere. And that has helped that manager kind of reflect a little bit on, yes, I'm much more open to looking at somebody that is not a perfect fit for us out here. In fact, I just— I mean, I'm actively interviewing right now for a bunch of different positions, and I just had that same topic come up. This person is great, Uh, they technically know the skills, they technically know how to do the job. I don't know if they're going to be, going to be able to add to our culture over here, and I don't know how long they're going to last in this. They came from a very large shop where they had big teams. We have a small company here, it's 1,500 employees, but within HR, very, very tiny. And so, you know, they were used to very much being siloed right, blinders. This is what I do. You know, this is my lane in HR, and I have somebody else that does something else. That's going to be a tough, a tough sell for them to come here. And all of a sudden, you've got visibility throughout the entire organization. People know who you are. But guess what? They're going to ask you things from other departments. And it's going to be hard for you, you know, you're going to be pointing fingers like, well, that's that person's job, or that person's job. No, no. That's your job now. We don't have a big team. You know, we're not, we're not a multinational company. You know, you have to answer those questions. You have to do it. So, you know, that was a perfect example. And this just happened 2 days ago with someone. And technically they could do the job, but realistically, we could tell that they're just not going to be able to fit. They're not going to be able to add much value, you know, in this company. They're just probably going to bail out. They're going to get tired and bail out. After a while.

Right? That's the burn. That's the burnout. That was—

it is, it is. And, you know, it's— I mean, we've been in this industry long enough, right? You don't get it right all the time, right? You just hope, you know, you hope, pray you've done enough homework, due diligence, reference checks, whatever it might be, ask the right interview questions. And sometimes, you know, you just don't get it right. I mean, I personally, I've interviewed someone, my manager has, my manager's manager, all the way up to C-suite. You hire someone and 3 months later it just does not work out. You know, like, man, how did we miss that one? You know, but my only saving grace is, well, better now than later, right? Better sooner now than 12 months from now.

Better you than me. No, I'm just kidding.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and you know, it's, it is, it is, it is, there's no sort of magic wand.

No, there isn't. It's a tough question, and I think it's, uh, it's good to have that open dialogue because, you know, sometimes we get caught up in culture fit without realizing that there's, like everything, there's a spectrum. There's good, there's bad, there's, you know, there's absence and then there's excess and moderation, you know. So, culture is very important for a thriving company. And when it changes, it can improve or it can hurt. But we sometimes get stuck in thinking about culture fit, not realizing that there are some things that we need to watch out for. Like, for example, culture fit can lead to cultural blindness or a kind of a bias, right?

I also, I go back to the groupthink, right? If everybody's— That's exactly what I'm saying. Now you've got, now you've got this siloed approach to having solutions to every— yeah, I mean, again, I was brought here because I don't think like general hospitality folks, you know, I'm thinking from an agency perspective because of my background, I'm thinking sense of urgency. I'm thinking, how do we qualify these people better? How do I make my job or my manager's job easier, faster, better? And, you know, they've enjoyed that. They like that piece of it, right? Historically this industry does not, has not seen it.

Well, we, um, we covered a lot, man. I appreciate your, uh, your thoughts and contributions on this. Um, and then, you know, I think we, we've got things that we would probably talk about for hours here with, with 3 of the things that we talked about. Um, but I always want to give my, my guests an opportunity to, um, well, 2 things. I have, I have a question that I ask everybody, and then I'd also like to give an opportunity to kind of have some closing thoughts. So let's go for the, the question, and then we can wrap, you know, I'll let you wrap up. The question is, who should be our next guest?

Oh, an individual or just in general?

Yeah, well, if you can't— who do you know? Um, if you can't think of anybody right now, then in general. But yeah, when I asked that question, is there somebody that you've recently spoken with or saw at a conference or read an article or whatever that made you think and you're like, this person has a unique perspective that would add value to the conversation. It doesn't necessarily mean that they'll accept the invitation. I had some pretty big, big famous people on here that I was surprised that they said yes. And it doesn't matter if it's somebody that's never spoken before. Don't think about that. Just think about they have something of value to contribute and may be interested in contributing.

Yeah, I, you know, I, I do have a name in mind. I don't know if he's been on your program, on the, on the podcast. Uh, Mike Woolford.

Yeah.

Uh, from The AI Recruiter. Uh, he is really at the forefront on the AI space and just not just to sell a product but to enhance recruiting and talent acquisition in general.

Oh yeah, yeah, we've had many conversations.

That's a great Yeah, I think Mike would be fantastic to have because there's a lot of value he can add around the topics of AI. And again, not just like, well, use this tool or buy this product.

Right.

Yeah.

Believe it or not, I already extended the invitation to him, but he had something going on at the time, so I'm going to circle back and remind him.

You know what? Obviously we're thinking the same way then.

Yes.

I think somebody like him would be fantastic. For your audience because there's a lot of value add in what he can bring to the table.

Totally.

Um, you know, it's the next evolution. It's the next— I was just telling a friend of mine, uh, this, this week she was looking for work and I said, listen, you gotta get your AI skills up because, uh, you know, that's kind of the next, the next evolution for TAs. It's like if you don't have that, you're gonna get left behind here.

Uh, I'm glad you— I'm glad you say evolution because I hear a lot of people saying revolution. It's like, it's it's not really a revolution. No, no, you know, it's not a— it's not— nothing is revolting about it.

No, no. Well, I mean, I go back to my, my original days in recruiting, right? And it was you're making phone calls, you're doing ref checks, you're doing this, that. Guess what I'm still doing today? I'm doing reference checks, I'm doing phone calls, I'm meeting with candidates, right? So that part hasn't changed. Now it's evolved to make things more virtual— scheduling calendars, text messaging, But I'm still doing, you know, kind of thing. So yes, it is, the AI piece will be an evolution. It is not going to totally eliminate things, in my opinion.

Yeah. Well, so the last thing to wrap up is a lot of folks listen to the recording or the podcast because they can't attend live on a Friday at 1. Go figure, right? Like, we all have work to do. But so I like to give people something to think about, like, like, like an idea or a question to chew on. So rather than giving us an idea, ask a question that we should ask ourselves. What is something that we should ask ourselves as we think about this conversation over the weekend? Like, what should we ask ourselves from a self-discovery point of view?

Wow, you definitely put me, you put me on the, on the spot over here. Um, you know, I, I think We're so focused nowadays on just the immediate need, right? The time to fill, I got to get this hire, I got to get this person, you know, set up, I got to get the new hire orientation, or I got to get the next candidate up, you know, from interview process. Are we hiring for maybe just the moment, today's needs, right? Or are we looking at tomorrow's growth? I think, I think is a big question to think about, right? So again, we're so stuck in the weeds, or, you know, we're not seeing the forest for the trees. But, you know, we keep hearing news about, well, AI is going to automate a lot of things, there's going to be more, more people out of work as a result, or a lot of, a lot less folks that are going to be doing the same work that they're doing today. Well, from a recruiting perspective, are we hiring for tomorrow's growth? right? Are we hiring for that, right? As opposed to just, I need— I have a need, I have a— I have to fill this seat today, uh, type of thing. So that to me, I think, is a really, really big sort of thought-provoking one, um, as well. And then kind of along with that is, do we prioritize just filling the seat quickly or quality of hire, right? Um, you know, I know from the agency world You want your person to stay there as long as possible, at least until your, your guarantee, you know, is— has expired. But are we prioritizing quality of hires versus just filling, filling seats type of thing? Which goes along with, are we looking at the growth for tomorrow as opposed to just filling today's needs?

I love that. Hire for tomorrow. For real, for real. Yeah, thanks a lot, man. Appreciate it. I really, really appreciate your time, and hopefully we can, uh, next time I'm out in Dallas, we can—

yeah, yeah, we'll have to grab a milk beverage or two.

Yes, or buñuelos, or, uh—

oh yes, yes, there's a couple of Colombian spots out here over in Addison.

Yeah, yeah, a few of our compatriots moved out there. Thanks a lot, man. Have a good weekend. And folks, everybody, if you want to tune in next week I have Marcel van de Meer from Holland who's going to be here, and he's an internationally renowned speaker. So don't miss that next Friday. Until then, be kind to yourselves. Bye, everybody.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it, Shelly.