AI Is Breaking Recruiting: The Resume “Slop” Problem + The New Hiring Playbook

I think AI definitely enables recruiters, or anyone really to do a lot more than they would generally, whether it's automating simple tasks or research or helping craft ideas, whatever it is, which is how I utilize it. Being mindful of how you're using AI as a job seeker, I think is really important and that's affected it. And now we're getting into this AI automated review technologies. So companies that have tons of applicants, their AI will go in and start reviewing them.

Welcome to the Venture Capital podcast. Today we're joined by Greg Terusian, the founder and CEO of Samson Rose, where he leads leads executive search for some of the most cutting edge companies in AI, robotics and deep tech. He's also the host of Machine Minds where he talks with leaders, shaping the future of automation and talent. Greg's been deep in the recruiting trenches for years, and what makes his perspective unique is that he's watching AI transform. Not what we hire for, but how we hire altogether. We're talking today about how recruiting is evolving in the age of A and robotics, where the challenges are, what's changing fast and where the biggest opportunities are next. So welcome to the show, Greg.

Thanks for having me, guys.

Thanks.

Pleasure to be here.

And do you want to talk more about your background? Give the audience, you know, so they can get a little bit better before we dive in?

For sure, yeah. So I'm originally from the uk where I started my recruiting career coming up to about 18 years ago now. Started on the external agency side, moved to the US market. I moved to LA 12 years ago with a recruiting agency and my goal was to actually move on the internal side. So I wanted to see what the other side of the recruiting world looked like and went into the tech space in house, part of HR teams. So building and leading talent acquisition teams, working with founders, working with heads of department. Worked my way up to a director position and then I started my own business just over six years ago. So now we're a boutique search firm primarily working with robotics hard tech AI companies, helping them find engineering talent, but then also leadership across the board. And in parallel to that, I have the Machine Minds podcast where I interview founders, leaders and investors in the space. And yeah, it's kind of like a platform to give back to the ecosystem, but helps me learn and create a great network and position my guests as thought leaders.

Awesome. Well, welcome.

Thank you.

So, Greg, you've been working in this field for a long time. I'm curious, how is AI changing your day to day and how have you seen Kind of this wave of AI shift, how you know everything that's happening in recruiting?

Yeah, I mean, it's a good question because there's a lot of talk and a lot of perspective that like AI is going to replace the recruiting process or recruiters and all of that I have heard. I don't know if it's just a stubborn, selfish opinion about it, but I don't think it can do that. I think AI definitely enables recruiters, or anyone really to do a lot more than they would generally, whether it's automating simple tasks or research or helping craft ideas, whatever it is, which is how I utilize it. And even some of the sourcing tools I use now are AI, native natural language and open web scraping. So they're incorporating a lot of different AI models to help us find people, unearth people in a better way. But my belief is, you know, recruiting is people finding people for people, like hiring managers to do stuff that people would do. So it's very hard to remove people from that process. You need a human in the loop. I hope that answers the question.

Well, part of what I'm curious about is. So are you saying you haven't seen much of a change in terms of how recruiting is done over the last call it five years?

No, definitely. I think there is, there's. Well, there's different parts of recruiting. So one, from a pain point standpoint, now that everyone has access to large language models and generative AI, I hear from my clients all the time that we are getting inundated with resumes that look the same, just a different name or a different location and they're all like, look like the same AI slop of a resume. So they don't look at anyone. They have a look at the first five and they say, this is all the same crap. Let's go and help someone, hire someone to help us with this. So being mindful of how you're using AI as a job seeker I think is really important and that's affected it. And now we're getting into this AI automated review technologies. So companies that have tons of applicants, their AI will go in and start reviewing them. So issues with that at first were like biases, you know, for certain schools or regions or names. I think we're past that a little bit. It's been refined, but now you're still wiping out a lot of good candidates, you know, that are qualified without having a human eyeball them. From a recruiter standpoint, AI has allowed us to do more, be more customized and intentional with Outreach, whether it's to candidates or clients, helping clients do more, you know, like adding more to our service instead of. There's a whole school of recruiting that's just very transactional. Right. Hey, I've got this cv. Do you want to hire this person? All right, no, off to the next one. Whereas now I can. Hey, let me help you with. I used to do it before, but it was very manual. But let me help you with job descriptions. Let me help you craft out this plan. Let me help you refine whatever it is. If I'm utilizing AI for that, I can offer more in my service, and it doesn't take me much more time. But I'm. I think we can all relate, I think, in our roles. AI Slop, whether it's outreach or in, you know, mailing list or we were talking John offline about newsletters or whatever it is, like, every day I can just click through without even opening an email to see AI crap that I'm personally against. So if you're using it in the right way, great. If you're not, it's going to hinder you.

How does AI Slop show up in a resume? Like, that's interesting, like, because in some ways, I feel like one of the challenges that you described is, one, they all look the same. But my guess is they all look a lot better than they used to, which makes it harder. It's not so much that it's slop. It's actually, like, pretty good. But the challenge then is, like, being able to look through that to the actual quality of the candidate. Whereas before, you could kind of use a resume as a gauge on candidate quality, and now, like, that's kind of gone out the window. Like, you have to look deeper somehow.

Yeah, I mean, that's a great question, actually. And I didn't actually realize what my clients were talking about until I became engaged with them, or more of. We do some fractional work. We call it rpo, recruitment process outsourcing. So we'll be part of the team. And they set us up on their system, and I'm looking at applicants with them, and when I saw it, I was like, wow, I've seen this resume six times, different names and stuff like that, and they're like, this is exactly what we're talking about. But when you dive a bit deeper, the candidate has the right wording or great formatting, but the experience is still missing. So what I. I've seen a lot is the best candidates aren't necessarily actively looking. The best ones aren't you using AI to make themselves look better or they've been out of the job search world for a while. Like, hey, the last four roles I've had, I've been headhunted or manager has brought me along with them and I haven't had an interview for 10 years. And they're using it to boost their profile. Experience speaks for itself in that place, right? You can see from someone's Resume or their LinkedIn, so you just have to look a little harder. It makes, it makes you look better as a candidate if you've used AI, but it makes the job harder for the person reviewing your profile because now you've got a lot that look good on the surface, but when you dive deeper, which is why we primarily headhunt people, we don't post jobs to get applicants.

Do you feel like AI has made your job as a headhunter more challenging because it's harder to have as much of an edge because everybody else also has these tools? Like, it's something I wonder about on the venture side, a lot of like there was a model that came out recently at Oxford and it was basically like 30 times better at picking winners than an average VC. And so it's like on the one hand, to your point, we face a similar thing in that like venture capital is all about like people investing in people, right? Building businesses for other people. And so it's hard to like take the people out of that. And so what I think actually ends up happening is models like this one from Oxford just get used by people like me, right, to level the playing field. But then everybody has these tools so it's harder to get, you know, eke out that little, that little edge. Are you seeing anything like that or how do you think about that?

Let me try and answer that with a comparison because I, I think what you're saying is 100% right. But my understanding in the VC world is even if you were to pick the winner in addition to just your check, any additional help that you can give, whether it's intros, go to market strategy pilots, whatever will increase the likelihood of that investment being successful. Right? So same with recruiting everyone, everyone doesn't know about the tools because there's a lot of people that are just like blinkers, blinders on and they're just head down and they don't look at new things. Right. I've always done it this, I've always used LinkedIn, so I'm always going to use LinkedIn kind of thing. But the ones that do use automation and are using AI. The edge is branding, positioning your, your network and then how you engage with talent, which is where that AI slop comes in. Yeah, because the same tools that I have, and I was on a call earlier today where it's like, hey, you can reach 600 people a day and it will customize it for everyone and all that. And I'm like, I get reached out to with those same emails and I'm not going to respond. Right. And I'm not going to go and put that out into the market. So it's how you engage with people, how you get introduced, how you get that hook. That's a differentiator.

Yeah.

And then that's how you can be successful as a recruiter in a, as a headhunter. The problem though is there's so much noise out there, the best candidates are getting hit by all the crap as well as the good stuff. So some of it is timing.

Yeah. So I'm talking about that a little bit more. It was interesting. We had Peter Walker on our, on our podcast a little while ago and he talked a lot about how one of the things that he's seeing is that there are fewer jobs. Sorry, the, the, the, the jobs that are available in Silicon Valley if you are not an AI engineer, are paying less on a real basis. Right. So like they're up, but if you account for inflation, that's less. And then what companies are doing is their valuations are really high, especially these AI companies. And they're. So your nominal dollar that you're getting in equity is about the same, but your percentage ownership is a lot smaller. And so in real terms, like there's kind of like just in, in the same way that there are two kinds of startups right now. There's like AI startups and everybody else. And AI is raising, you know, 50% of every dollar invested in VC right now. And then the rest is like split among like a ton of different industries. The same is also happening in talent that you've got AI talent that is highly, highly compensated and highly fought after. And then there's like everybody else. Are you seeing that in your day to day and is that true and how are you thinking about that with your clients?

Well, I don't tend to operate in the pure, what, you know, general public considers AI. Right. Purely generative AI language models and things like that. A lot of what we do is at that intersection of hardware and software. So AI might be more reinforcement learning, deep learning, machine learning for a robot or a vehicle or drone, but you know, Everyone is now getting paid more and that talent is in demand. So even if you find a great person and they happen to be in the Bay Area and, and this has happened to me recently, actually this year, awesome startup, competitive offer, work directly with the CEO and then Meta comes in and just says, hey, come and do this and own this for a ton more money. And it's something that you've never done before. Like you just cannot compete with that. And I think that that's the problem where you've got this density of companies and talent like in the Bay Area that are vying for the same people, the ones with the bigger either opportunity or bankroll. Most time can win. It comes down to the candidate though. You know, how you what their motivations are, how you position your employee value proposition. But salaries are definitely inflated. The stage of companies we work a lot with like precede to like Series A, we go up to, you know, larger companies, but in there the salaries are all kind of in the same ballpark.

Yeah.

You know, the percentage or the equity is what can really vary. But it's tough. I mean it is tough because everyone wants the great people. Everyone wants the people who have been releasing papers or that are leading in their field. And if you don't have anything that's differentiating you as a place to work, an employer of choice, it's tough, it's uphill battle.

Yeah. What advice would you have for the, the founders in our audience that are thinking about how do I get the really good talent? Like how especially how do you compete against Meta and Google and OpenAI?

Well, you have to really define what you need and why. Like some founders I've worked with, they're like, hey, I've been following this researcher for years. I've implemented some of their papers in my work. Like that's a really unique outreach right there. Hey, I love what you released and it's very personal, it's very customizable. Problem is that's one person, you know, you've and probably a lot of other people are looking at them. So you need to be very clear about what you want, very clear about your value proposition to them. You know, if they're joining super early, what that means for them and their career, what they're going to earn, what that's going to look like after the next raise or after the next milestone and you know, paint a picture for them what success looks like for the company and for them. And then it's about identifying because not every founder is aware of all the talent out there or what they need. You know, you need a good partner, whether it's a co founder, whether it's a recruiter, whether it's your vc. You need someone to bounce these ideas off that can help you think through creative ways. Because sometimes people are so stuck in. I just need someone from Tesla or Nvidia to come in and do this. I'm like, why? Yeah, because it will look great on my deck. Okay. But that you can't pull them out because you can't compete comp or equity wise. Right. And then maybe the person with that name brand isn't going to actually be adding that much value to you as a business at this stage. So be mindful about what's right for your stage and that normally this is stuff we go through in an intake process with a client. Right. Thinking about adjacent industries, adjacent technologies, different roles, projects, conferences, all this stuff. I think going through that kind of exercise can really help you unearth different talent. Maybe ones are untapped and aren't being bombarded by everyone else. But if you're trying to go after the same people, everyone else is, you just need to have some sort of better offer. Whether that's career trajectory, market share, role title. There's different levers you can pull, right. Hey, this person's a lead engineer, right? Well, we're going to give them VP because we're six people, but they're going to have to grow into that VP role.

Yeah, they can kind of title inflate to get them back.

Exactly. Yeah. It's just a different lever to pull. Like equity and conf. Title is one.

Yep, yep. Interesting. John, I know you hire a lot of engineers for what you do. I'm curious, like what, what questions do you have for Greg or I, I.

Mean I see what Greg doing. I don't know if I've got questions. I imagine it's very relationship based.

Mm.

It's a lot of being top of mind on a double sided market. One for your, your potential hiring pool. That they need to trust you when you reach out. Because you know, some of these guys, like what is it? If you're like a developer in San Francisco, it's very possible on LinkedIn like you're just getting alerts every hour of just cold outreaches. So you need to have someone with those relationships that can get in but you know, also on the other side. So it's just, it's just extremely relationship based. I don't think people realize, you know, how much work goes into that.

Yeah, it's True. And I think personal branding, even from a cold standpoint. Right. Even if I don't have a relationship with people, if I reach out cold, you're more likely to get a response if you look credible, if you're connected with similar people, if you're putting out relevant content, if you know you're showing up in the right places. That's a recruiter or a VC or a founder that you want to engage with or have as part of your network. Um, whereas there's some people that just don't invest in that and don't see the importance in that. And then you're just one of many. You know, I, I, I, I see it myself when people are trying to sell me stuff or connect with me for whatever reason, whether it's conscious or subconscious, that's, that's what happens.

Yeah. I'm curious, what are your thoughts on some of these new platforms that have popped up like Paraform?

So Paraform is, I want to say it's new because there was previous ones hired and vettery and all these other ones and paraforms and you take, yeah, it's a new take on it. I think they're valuable for certain types of recruiters that, hey, I'm just, I'm a resume machine, I'm a sourcing machine. I don't want to do anything BD related, I don't want to find new clients. I just want to stick my head down and crank out candidates. Basically. You can build a good business on that, you know, and then for the clients on the other side, they either they don't have internal recruiters or they've got one HR person that's managing employee relations, benefits, HR and recruiting. That's a great add on. Right. You're going to spread bet against recruiters that are good in their own verticals. So there's a place for it. I'm not the hugest fan. I mean I'm on it now. I think. I haven't used it. I have friends that have had some success on it and not, I just like the personal relationship and contact with a founder and a hiring manager. And then you can get real feedback and you can get even deeper alignment and see again what levers you can pull from a talent profile or background or experience. And it completely removes any advisor role that a good recruiter would be able to give you as a hiring manager. Right. If I engage with an early stage founder, I can give them some nuggets about what they can do themselves. Maybe they don't need me for Everything or how we can craft the job description different. Like it's not just a pure transaction. But again I, I think there's a space, a place for it and a space for the recruiters that want to work that way.

Yeah. What advice would you have for a founder on how to pick a good recruiter?

That's a good question. Experience is definitely important, but I know awesome recruiters that have a handful of years of experience as well. So some of it is going to be personality wise. There's very salesy recruiters and gun ho ones that are just going to send you a million resumes and just like hope something sticks. If you like volume, great. Like some, some clients I speak to, they're like we need to see 10 people before we make a decision. I was like, why? That is the worst way of hiring. Like you're too busy to do that. Like let me whittle it down and give you the solid ones. Right. But, but some people prefer it the other way and then I'm not right for them. You know, I'm not just gonna throw resumes out. So one is way of working. 2 Reputation if you can find it out, like if they've been referred to you, if you know other people that they've worked with, you should be able to see from a reputable recruiter like on their LinkedIn that people would have recommended them in the recommendations or referrals, I can't remember at the bottom. So you need, they need to have some of those and you can see what clients have said about them and candidates have said about them and then industry knowledge, it doesn't always have to be. Obviously we operate in like robotics, hard tech and AI, but there's roles within there that hey, I'm just a full stack software engineering recruiter that's generic across every industry. Whatever you're hiring for, go for a specialist, whether that's industry or vertical. Because someone who is a generalist, there's some great ones out there but they're recreating the wheel every time they start a new search. It's tough. It's tough for them and then it's tough for you because they're learning as they go.

Yeah. And I know that you do a lot of like outbound recruiting where you're reaching out directly to candidates who aren't necessarily looking for a role. But what advice do you have for people for, for those candidates, like how do they shine through the interview process and out compete all the AI slop that's out there?

I think you Mean, like, once they actually get an interview with a client with a company, they need to do their research about who the company is, what they do, why the role exists. And their recruiter should be able to help them with some of that, point them in the right direction. Professional. A lot of interviews initially are done like this, right? A video call at first, at least. You need to be professional, engaging. I can't tell you the amount of times I've had people with, like, their laptop down to the side while they're, like, shuffling around with books and things. And I'm like, this is an interview. What? So be mindful of that. Um, even attire, you know, like, no one's saying get suited and booted in the tech industry, but, like, don't show up in a tank top if you're a dude, like, with your, you know, like, you just came from the beach. So that's just simple etiquette. And then communication's key. Try and be to the point and in depth if you can be. But also mindful of if you need to divulge more. Like, you can always answer a question. Say, hey, if you want me to go deeper, just tell me. But I'll answer it to however you think you see fit and have questions for them. It just shows you're engaged. It shows you're actually interested in what the company's doing or even the individual. If it's a peer colleague interviewing you or potential colleague. Sometimes they don't put the hiring manager on the first screen. It could be just someone in the team. Ask them about their experience or how they got into the company or what attracted them, you know? Yeah.

Do you have any favorite questions you've seen candidates ask or that you suggest that they should ask?

I don't normally suggest that people ask. I don't like to lead the witness, which. Which other recruiters will tell me, you're missing a trick. But I think it was probably back to, like, my internal experience when I was an internal recruiter. Like, I'm hiring people that are going to be my colleagues, and I don't want to, like, fudge them into this role. And now when I'm external, if I do the same and then they leave after, like, two months, it looks bad on me and I have to backfill it. So I'm like, if you're great and I've screened you and the client thinks you're great, go and do your thing. Be yourself, you know? But I'm not going to tell you what to ask. But the stuff that really interests me is when candidates ask about my own perspective, my own opinions, why this company is the one that should do what it's supposed to do. You know, if there's 20 companies looking after the same thing, what makes this one different? You know, what's my experience been with them? Why would I choose them about anything else? And also if they're super passive, like, why should they leave their current role? That's kind of a cheeky one to ask. And you're like your first interview. But as you get down the line, you can ask people in the process, like, knowing what you know about my company that I'm currently in, why would I leave to come to this one? Those are kind of cool ones.

How do you answer that without being biased? Well, maybe you should just stay at Meta. Yeah.

You know, now that I think about.

It.

I mean, it's always going to come across biased.

Right.

And I say that at the beginning. I'm like, I'm obviously biased because this is my client, or I'm obviously biased because I'd want you to take the role. But I just say what it is. Meta isn't. I mean, it's a huge company, huge pay, very secure from like a stock standpoint. But like, there's a lot of things you can sell against. Right. You're one of many. You know, it depends what Zuckerberg decides to do next month. Depends what the earnings call is going to be. You know, whatever it is. There's so many variables. And I am of the firm belief that a startup that has recently raised, if someone raises and they say, hey, we're good for the next 24 months, we've got Runway. They're a lot more secure than a public company because on the next earnings call or if something happens in another team or another country that might affect your department. So, yeah, that's how I sell against it.

Yeah. So I had this experience recently. One of my former interns, good friend of mine, working at a, a very well funded company, decent brand, very well known, you know, founder, if you will, running, running it, but not like a huge company. So. And, and he was approached by some friends of his that he worked at at a prior company that are starting something new. And so they were, you know, they were trying to offer him a competitive package, but he knew he would be taking a haircut on his salary. And then of course, he went back to his current employer and was like, hey, I'm considering this. Which, and, and voiced all of his complaints right around, hey, I don't Love what I'm doing. I don't feel like I'm advancing and like I'm getting, making good money, but like, I kind of hate my job. And they came back and bumped up his salary, made some changes to his job position and so then ultimately he stayed and, and so like, I think about his scenario and how challenging it must be for small, small businesses, small startups to be able to attract people away. And like, he's, he's great. He is not like, you know, the end all, be all engineer either. Right, right. And so, yeah, I think it's, I think it's challenging in that regard. And he and I talked a lot about like, how to evaluate one versus the other. And I was kind of like, well, you should go where you're going to be happy. Right. But I mean, he kind of got what he wanted and that like his job is changing and so maybe he'll be happier. Maybe not like fully happy, but, you know, also, you know, he's going to dry his tears with his new dollar bills. And I guess it brings up like this broader question, which is, I guess there's two things. So, like one, if you're a startup, like, so hard to compete, right, against all the money these people can throw at. And so it's some of that stuff you talked about earlier, which is how do you differentiate, how do you create like roles or opportunities that like, transcend the money? I think about anthropic and how they were able to keep, you know, meta at bay with a lot of their talent. Not all of it. Right. But a lot of their talent largely because they were making the argument, I think of, well, if you want to build AGI, it's going to be US or OpenAI. And so like, yeah, you can make more money, but at the end of the day, no one's going to care. Yeah, right. Because you're not going to achieve it. You're not, you're not going to be on the team that achieves AGI. So I think, I think that's like an interesting perspective, is like, can you, can you appeal to some other area that they care about, so prestige or accomplishment or opportunity or whatever. But then there's this other thing that I've struggled with a lot in our current society, which is we don't really promote within. And the extent that, to which we do it always comes from an outside threat. So. Right. And then this scenario is like a perfect example of one where, you know, my friend wasn't he, he actually had gotten like a pay raise recently and yet he still wasn't like super happy. And it took this other job opportunity for him to be able to come to the table to negotiate something better.

Yeah.

And that company almost lost like really good talent to someone else. Right. Because they weren't, they weren't keeping him happy. And I think there's a lot of people, like, I just hear story after story which is like, if you want to get a pay raise, go find another job. So you have like negotiating leverage. Right.

It's very sad.

Yeah.

Especially if you work for a big company. Like if you work for, if you've come out of college and gone to work for a public company and maybe they've been around for, you know, decades, you're getting a small, it's. You're stuck in this percentage increase every year. And even if you get a promotion, same thing. It was a story with my wife.

Right.

She came out from college, worked at Pepsi for like, I don't know, seven years. At that point I was like, no one stays at a job for seven years at this time. And she's just like way underpaid.

Right.

Until she had play the game and move. But the, the counter offer thing is an interesting one. It really sucks that you have to do. And I speak from personal experience because I had the same thing. I had a much higher paying job somewhere that I was really interested in the role, but I was invested in this company and I'd been asking for promotion and development and bigger role and it just kept being pushed off until you have one foot out the door. And I don't know what the latest statistic is, but it used to be super high. Percentage of counteroffers leave within 12 months of accepting that counteroffer. So it's just a band aid at the end of the day. And a lot of it comes down to people's personal motivations. Like you mentioned the anthropic, anthropic thing about if you want to build AGI, like that's appealing to something bigger than dollars. And every time, every, without a doubt, it's black and white for me. If I speak to a candidate and they, and I say, well, before I talk to you about my role that I reached out to you about, like, why are you interested in looking for a new position? You know, what, what's important to you in your career? Next step? If they say money, I just end the call. All right, that's great. You know, there's always going to be someone that will pay you more, but it's not my client, even if they can. But it's like you're just going to leave for money and that's not the right motivation, especially in these kind of industries, like if you want to work in quant trading or whatever, cool. But if you're trying to build something, if you've got these moonshot ideas or you're trying to be like this industry defining technology, that shouldn't be what you're looking at. I mean you touched on so many things here because a lot of these companies don't think about learning and development and it has to be a cultural thing and coming from the top down that we promote from within, we develop within, we. Which caveat, just as a startup is hard because the same person that has brought you from pre seed to seed or maybe you've made them stretch to a round and you've said the head of ops and put some catch all title isn't going to take you to your C round or your D round. Right. So you have to hire the right people. I, I call it shedding staff. Right. You get to the stage now you need to shed them to go and hopefully you can retain them. But some people are just there addicted to the startup, 0 to 1 and they go off to the next thing, which is fine, you have to have an open conversation. But if you want to retain and you want to promote from within, you have to make that like a top down approach and make it cultural and proactively put things in place there, whether it's management training, leadership training, extra courses, certifications, whatever it is.

Yeah. To help them grow. So I'm curious, so you gave an example of like if you're just in it for money, I'm not the guy. And you end the call. Are there, are there ever situations where they tell you about where they currently are and you're like, this is not going to be a fit either because you're so happy where you are. And, and my question there is like what are, what are those companies doing right that get people to retain so strongly? Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. But I don't, I guess I don't have a ton of examples because unless I know the person and they're taking my call, most of the time they're not taking the call. If they've taken the call, I'll be like, okay, are you actively looking? And they say, nah, you know, it sounded interesting, there's a reason for taking that. And even if you're passive, even if you weren't even looking. You've taken mine now, which means you're going to take other people's or means you're going to look. So we're on like this short time window. Yeah, yeah. So that makes sense.

There is definitely like selection bias going on. Of course.

For sure. For sure. Yeah. But unless I know them, like if I, if I've got personal relationship with these people in the industry that I've just built up for, I'm like, hey, can I pick your brain about a role or let me see if you know anyone else. The, the ones that are super interested or content with where they are, they're involved in something bigger than them. You know, they were involved in a bigger project, they feel like they belong, they're engaged. Engagement, such a huge thing. You know, even when you hire a new person, that time to productivity metric. Right. Increases at engagement rate and they're less likely to leave.

Yeah.

So if you hire someone like opportunistically and you don't really have a role for them, you're like, oh, we'll figure out when they're here. And then they don't get engaged and they don't feel productive, they're more likely to leave. Yeah. So I think people need to be mindful of that as well.

I read, I read something recently I was thinking about. It was a good, like a great job with a horrible boss is worse than a bad job with a great boss.

Yeah, yeah. So true. Yeah.

And so, so much of it too is like, yeah, like you're something part of something bigger. But to your point, like engagement. And a lot of that just comes from the leadership of the company and making you feel heard and valued and you know, helps you learn and grow and develop and all those things. Things are super valuable and important.

So for the founders that are listening, I think that's something to be mindful of as well. Because as a founder, you're slammed, you're spread thin. If you're the face of the business, if you're trying to lead, you know, founder led sales, if you're doing all of that stuff, like you need to be mindful about your reports and reporting line, especially if you're hiring someone that's senior to come in and now you're like, oh, I'll take them on as a report. If you're now also the bottleneck decision maker and hiring manager, that does chip away at those things for those employees. And good people that can add value, that are heavy hitters will go off to something else. They just get fed up after a while because they're not doing anything, they're not adding value. So be mindful is all I can say. Be self aware, Be mindful and delegate wherever you need to.

Makes sense. So in the last few minutes we have, as I was thinking about this, recruiters like yourself are kind of, are kind of like investment bankers of talent. From the perspective of like to your point, you're kind of like you're evaluating your clients and helping and then convincing people. Right. Allocators of. Of time and ability to those different companies as investments. Right. Like I oftentimes tell people all that, like I'm like it. When you decide what company you want to go work for, you should be thinking about it like 10x harder than I do of whether or not I should give them money as a venture capitalist. Because you're giving them like everything, you know, like all of you. Then yeah, they are paying you and so forth, but like you're giving them like a ton of like time and emotion and expertise and like all these things. So with that as context, since you focus on like robotics and stuff, which are the robotics companies you think are the most interesting and exciting.

Yeah. This is what I've been waiting for the whole time. Greg. We're opening our bank accounts, we're ready to wire the funds.

Just tell us. I think some of that is personal preference and commercial viability. Right. Because there's obviously the super exciting ones that is getting all, getting all the press right now. The figures and obviously the Tesla's optimus and anything to do with humanoid is sexy right now. And headlines.

You've got 10 million.

Where's it going me right now? I am probably going to a clearly defined product with a clearly defined icp. That's probably you want name.

We are names. We are names.

Oh my. This is a VC podcast.

Really excited about.

Okay. I really like a company, I just had them on my podcast, but it's not out yet. Called Slip Robotics, which is really cool. They basically create this robot that does what a forklift would do, but it goes underneath the pallet and autonomously loads and unloads trucks. Just rinse and repeat over and yeah.

Of your 10 million, how much do they get?

Oh, 3.

3 million. Okay.

High conviction. I like 7 million.

Next. Where's the 7 million going?

Probably field AI. Field AI. They build brains for robots. So they're primarily a software company. So they're using the hardware that other people are developing. Boston Dynamics Unitree, all these other ones that you see videos of drones Quadruple, even Humvees. And they're retrofitting them with their autonomy stack, so their own sensors and their field foundation model so they can be useful in different industries. Oil and gas, mining, logistics, federal defense, etc. So. Yeah. And super smart people. Yeah.

How much do they get?

Oh, how much do I have left? Seven.

Seven.

All right, let's go five. Wow.

Okay.

Yeah, I would have gone the full seven, but I feel like I want one more.

All right, give us one more.

They are called Framework Automation and they are building a robot, basically an automated robotic manufacturing, but for clothing, for textiles. So clothing was like the first industrial revolution. Obviously everything's been offshore, cheap, cost, all of that stuff. They're trying to bring that back now with technology. Really cool. Founder just moved the office from New York to la. Ground level, I think. Big bang for your buck. And right now with all this social media buying and everyone doing quick turnaround, you can do everything custom there and have a huge impact.

What do you think of X1? They made a lot of waves this last week.

They did, yeah. I'm really interested to see how that deployment goes. I know one of my old clients, Kind Humanoid, was acquired by them and the founder, Christoph, went over there to build their hands or work on the hand development. And the really cool company. Very interesting. I am very curious to see how it goes once they start shipping.

You're going to buy one?

I was thinking about it, but again, I have two young kids and I'm like, I don't really want this robot walking around and without me seeing that it's safe and stable and has great uptime. That. That's the biggest part.

Will it do domestic violence for me so I don't have to.

Exactly, yeah. Can I be one. One step removed from all of this? No, it's.

I didn't spank my child.

Yeah. That was not me. Yeah, I'm. I'm. I think that's the biggest part of having robots in the home right now is things like that. If you've got pets, if you've got kids, all of that stuff, like just making sure that it can.

Well, the thing that I'm not quite comfortable yet with, with it is that it's not like fully autonomous because they have a call center. Right.

And.

Tasks like the cameras turn on and someone takes over, which I think makes a ton of sense, except like, I don't know that I want someone having that kind of visibility into my house, like, kind of like walking around and whatever I want in my own house. Right. So I think, anyways, yeah, yeah, I.

Haven'T looked into it too much. That was my thing as well. My wife was like, oh, these are really cool. I was like, do you really want someone seeing? But then someone told me that, oh, it's only for a new task. Like there'll be standard tasks it can do, but if you wanted to learn something new, they have to teleoperate and train it and then. So we'll see again. I want to see. It's all great until they deploy, like pre ordering and all of that stuff. Let's see what manufacturing is like, let's see what deployment's like and then I'll make my decision.

So, last question of the podcast. So one of the things I've been thinking about a lot is that everyone's like, yes, like AI is amazing, but it also feels like it's a little bit far off before AI starts replacing jobs. Right. It's the same thing with these robots. It's a little bit off before we actually have them in the house doing our laundry. This is like the first one, right? But I think it's probably going to be one of those things where it's like it's off in the horizon, off in the horizon, off in the horizon and all of a sudden it's here and it's going to feel very sudden. I know you are working with a lot of clients in the robot space. Do you, do you feel that? Or do you feel like now it's going to be slow, gradual and it'll roll out?

I think if you're not in the space and reading. I'm a bit desensitized to it because I read all these updates every day on new technology, on new adoptions. I speak to founders that are deploying. And I think what the general public don't realize is there's so much in our lives that is automated or uses robots that we just don't see. Like if you're receiving things from Amazon every day or whatever, like dhl, there's so many robots in these facilities, right. And if you're in LA or whatever now, you've got Waymos and you've got the delivery serve robots. Like there's stuff all over, like restaurants, like. Exactly.

Restaurants, cooking and a bunch of restaurants is all robot driven now.

Yeah, cleaning, there's hotels, there's sports facilities, just all cleaning robots, stuff. Like that company that I'm involved with, Autopilot, we do like cleaning robots for pickleball. Right. And people love seeing these robots, right? So I think because there's so much in the press right now that will feel like the gradual part. And people you think about three years ago, no one was talking about chat GPT. Now at Thanksgiving, you and your family and people that are like three different generations apart all talk about AI and how they use it, you know, and that ripple effect of investment and awareness into the physical world is what we're going to see. And before you know it, they'll be here.

Yeah. It's exciting times. Well, Greg, thank you so much for joining us for this episode. It's been really fun to learn from you and how you think about recruiting and what all is happening in the world of robotics.

Three companies. Yes, I can do that for you.

All right.

If not, we should at least have them on the podcast.

Yeah, that would be super fun.

You'll be our new gatekeeper for robotics. Oh, does Greg know about you? Oh, he didn't mention you. So you're not cool enough.

Run them all by me. Happy to help.

Sounds good.

Thanks, guys.

Thanks for joining. Check out Greg's company. Do you want to shout out your URL real fast or the best way?

Yeah, you can.

Yeah.

The website is SamsonRose. S a m s o n R-O-S e dot com. I'm on LinkedIn as well. Greg Terusian. I'm very active on there or my email is gregamsonrose.com awesome.

Well, thanks for being on the podcast. Thanks for joining us today, guys. If you've got comments, leave them below and or get in contact with Greg directly. Thanks.