today all right you're recording
and no photo bombs for my grandkids who are here no i'm i'm not are you talking about me photo bombing no my grandkids i told them they can't vote about me today video bomb why should this day be different than any other day or how about hey jeremy come in here for a second now that i might do though oh i could bring my new puppy we did get a new puppy that's really good here so so so so let's let's start this um you know for everyone i mean every i mean we see we see all the attendees and and and we you know i i'm steve levy and i think this guy's name is dean decosta wow rhymes with pasta there you go all that other stuff um so this is uh this is uh you know uh the uh the sourcing playhouse where where where where lots of fun and and mirth and uh sourcing shenanigans take place and and we're gonna be doing this every two weeks so you can spread the word you can spread the love and we're going to be talking about anything that you want us to talk about um but it has to do with kind of sourcing and finding people and things of that nature
a couple of things here uh do i do want to welcome the group here we have the vuan 2 connection uh that is uh victoria 2 and wutai from higher tool is that like the rock and sock connection it is just it is just like the rock and saw connection misters mr sorso that's who it is mr sorso uh tiff terry susan uh with susan mctaggart uh which we found out she has her great grandmother is a levy so you know everybody in sourcing is is is related is that like five degrees from kevin beck that's five degrees it is five degrees from stephen dean oh there we go and uh tiara how you doing another
ht adam bogart so you know we're we're gonna we're gonna just start uh uh taking uh uh uh information from the uh from folks in the chat and and we're gonna let you all tell us what you want us to talk about and we we're gonna deep dive under those topics and let's see where it goes we're going to make this a fun playhouse so who wants to go first with their sourcing challenges who's going to type in right now
this could be interesting i mean i half expect you know carrie to be the first person well so while we're waiting it was interesting i was just um helping some people with their sourcing challenges and one of the questions they asked is can you use area codes to find people location based then i go uh i you could except it won't work and they're like well why not i go um let me ask you a question what state are you do you have cell phone yeah what state did you get in texas what's the art code he said and i go okay where do you lay out california you still using the same uh number for your cell phone he goes yeah i go that's why it won't work well it'll work you know you know it will work well you know you'll get the information you know i i have a 203 area code going back to 1996 yeah from connecticut and and i carry it with me wherever i go right but that's my point if you're going to search by sign area code and you want someone in new york you're going to show up as connecticut not new york because of your area code the only way area codes really work anymore is if it's uh a landline but do you realize how few people have land lines anymore you know do you know on the true story you know um the reason we actually have a landline here because we have uh uh you know leslie's mom is is older right yeah so you know they're you know that is you know one reason there's certainly reasons for doing it yeah i have a landline because my wife's grandmother was in germany and she couldn't call into cell phones you could only call in the landline so sweet and we just decided not to bother getting rid of it because it's like not costing me anything i mean it's part of the bundle for the everything i get um but to be but a lot of people i'm forgetting where i saw it i saw it somewhere but they're estimating that they're they're asking the percentage of people with landlines has gone down 10 every year for the last four years they're estimating that less than 40 percent of the people have landlines anymore you know what yeah what's interesting uh there's a website uh called spydialer.com and and it's one it's one of the many sites that you can use if a number comes in you can you know find out who it belongs to you know the one the one neat thing about spy dialer is you can also play the first 10 seconds of the international of their message so that's often a really good way to see if the person is there i'm actually going to put it into the chat and actually try it interestingly enough car uh carrie yeah i i have a google voice mavericks i'm glad you put it there i have to remember to use it i don't use it enough so i have to use it once a month or they take it away yep i have used a google voice account for other states at times just so people think i'm a local rhythm um and it's a cool trick but it's still yeah it's um well the nice thing well the nice thing about the about the the numbers like the google voices is that they're often attached to people's social media accounts oh yeah and so that's one sourcing tidbit that you can use to triangulate where a person may or may not because because that number is going to be associated with their gmail email address and there is a tool that can do all that but here's the here's the problem if you're someone like i'm guessing carrie does this and i do it i have seven gmail accounts yeah one of them is used for this kind of stuff so go for it it's like you know you get a tool and they say you must sign in with a gmail you know why they want you to do that is so they get access to your address book so i have an account that has nothing but one person at me yeah and that's what i use so people can't do that and and the same thing goes with the uh google voice uh you almost have to have dummy accounts nowadays it's next to impossible not to without getting well the primary reason i i think for having a dummy account is to be able to go online to certain sites and not be deluged with uh promotional material oh yeah oh my god yeah you know it's uh you know there's a reason why you know i i have as i have a feeling and this is something i think is going to change a couple of years is is uh you know the broadening of the different types of browsers that people use uh you know you know we've discussed this i mean you we we we use you bing and google and duckduckgo and opera and tour and uh showdown and a whole whole litany of of browsers you know that's actually an interesting show that we may want to do in the future is compare and contrast searching a basic search across a litany of eight to ten different browsers actually no we could use one we could use the uh 100 browser site and do the 100 and then just pick which engine we want to see the results from yeah actually but that's i just added that to my tool by the way the toolbox yeah that that's that's my to the tool i created remember i told you i gotta show you that i added that capability and then that's another thing to to you know for for folks to do it's you know i i i think the bulk of the recruiting profession has been distilled down to i'm arbitrarily pulling a number 80 percent of the recruiters and sources using uh you know 95 of the same methods and it's it's tantamount to you know sourcing you know fishing for the same type of fish at the same pond with the same line with the same pole with the same bait the same time of the day i would argue it's worse than that it's not just same everything in the same pond it's the same everything in one little section of the pond because let's remember using linkedin as our example you can't see everybody in linkedin because they only limit your results to a thousand so that means you're not looking in the whole pond you only get to look in one little piece of the pond and there's a whole bunch of fish out there you can't see because they won't allow it yeah and that's why uh uh and oh hello we have some new attendees again adam pleased to see you mr hamill how are you oh i didn't even know this mark and k kkk is here where's cam pam crouch oh did she yeah how cool right above susan and below natalia when that natalie excuse me you can't even pronounce the name right i know i i know i can't
that's very interesting so um again i want to go back to um let's i'm to bring somebody in to talk i i i hope she will allow us to do i'm going to allow carrie to talk very nice uh so we're going to try some things out so carrie i'm going to allow you to talk i hope you hope your microphone is on nope now it is carrie are you there i'm here so so she's pictureless she's not she's she's patiently scared
because that's something that we want to do here is is bring in you know you know ask folks who are really passionate about sourcing i know in your case you're at apn uh you know we've we've talked about some of the things you're you're you're doing there and i i have a feeling that the the people who ultimately will start participating this have similar experiences or needs or or or wishes or is is there something you know now that you're you're really helping to build out the sourcing function there are are are there are there things that you're coming to realize about sourcing that you haven't really thought of before oh my gosh yes um so now i'm actually doing it right and i know that there are all these different functions now to sourcing and i am in a great place right now and that i can help kind of define what that means uh with a couple of the other sources that are there for appian but i'm one person supporting an entire team and i'm starting to now learn that i cannot do it all um and starting to kind of try to figure out where can i add the most value for that need at that time and how can i figure it all out strategically um being one person so that's kind of where i am right now with my role um i'm doing a sprint right now which has been really really fun um and energizing but there's so many different aspects to what i know this role can be that i haven't even touched yet so so you you you brought up on something that's really interesting and and i don't know if we really talk about it enough it's the concept of of sprints and sourcing uh feel like giving a little more detail to the to the gang here as to what that means in in your environment yeah so right now we have like every organization is going to have i guess greater head count in different areas so for me it's software engineers and i'm supporting one of the groups inside of my organization and i'm literally going hard all day you know eight hours a day whatever it ends up being looking just for one particular profile and getting them into my sourcing workflow and campaigns and literally just hitting the ground running every day and doing that only for two weeks are there any i mean how did you come upon the the development of the persona because i'm assuming that's you know been part of the of the foundation work yeah so a lot of the different groups kind of typically target the the same full stack skills so like the core skills stack i guess you could say that really it's really fun and that i kind of have a lot of flexibility in that i'm going after strong software engineers with a certain level of experience with certain level education um but they're all similar in terms of skill so fully qualifying it for one particular role and not really because there's so many so really it's more about finding great software engineers that are interested in what we're doing and getting them interested in wanting to talk to us um interesting when you say finding great software engineers how yeah i know that is is how do you determine that uh have has has has the technical team have you worked with the technical team to define questions whose answers may give you an orientation as to whether they're really really good okay and not really okay so i know where you're going with like having great questions to ask a hiring manager to help screen out the candidates um and make sure you're targeting the right profile um but yes in some certain certain circumstances i have but for this one it's what we call evergreen so it's literally look for full stack java engineers who check these boxes and work for a software product company that you know could really transition well um and just go so that's what i'm doing okey-dokey is there is there anything that we can help you with
um i guess one of the questions i've always had is and this is not like super exciting like what creative sourcing tool can help me find this person it's more about how do you manage your time um you know obviously i block time off on my calendar to make sure i'm heads down but there are lots of fun things that you can do so like you can be on linkedin you can be on seek out right but then there's more of that deep sourcing stuff where you can do more of the x-ray searching and building lists and doing all like the stuff that takes way more time than you have in the day with high hiring needs so i'm just curious how do you make time in your day to do more than and i don't mean to like be negative or anything but not always be doing like the low hanging fruit and that you do a little bit more of the deeper sourcing like how do you make time for that let's do anybody want to answer that one show of hands anybody want to raise their hand and answer that one or should i just pick on somebody ah adam okay carrie i'm going to let adam talk now
here adam adam the floor is yours all right so hey carrie my name's adam boger and i um lead recruiting for firestone building products and for me you know you say why how do you stay from not working on the low-hanging fruit all the time that's what i do work on i go after that low-hanging fruit so i can get it off my plate and then go tackle something else um you know i started my career in the agency world and i still you know it's always go after the money what hiring manager is going to get you feedback quickest and go after those so you can get those racks filled and that's kind of what i do from my sourcing and positions now is what position can i work on that i know i'm going to get relatively quick feedback that's going to help me keep moving and then sometimes you just got to block it off on your calendar and shut everything down that's tough because there's a thousand things that come across all the time and you just have to have that dedication to do it but i i personally like staying with that low-hanging fruit even though there are a lot of fun things and tricks to use so um i don't even know if that helps you or not sorry uh let me just yeah dean yeah so i can kind of understand a little bit where the car is coming from when i was at microsoft i had four different groups and over 100 wrecks i was managing and the way i handled all that was purely like a project manager i had ms project i had it all baked up i had calendar so what i would do is i have a plan first thing i do is look at all my positions and bucket them the ones that are pretty much the same thing and then i would say okay here's my plan i've got three hours of sourcing set aside on monday i'm gonna go in and find x number of potential candidates for this position when i'm done that's it i'm done move on to the next move on the next so on so forth when that was done if i had extra time i might go back but i always had on friday and i don't know why it was friday i think it was because most of my iron managers were going and they left me alone is i always had what i called extra sourcing time set aside and that's when i did the things that were not the simple easy quick stuff that's when i'd start doing the x-ray looking at conference lists and all that on friday because like i said i usually wasn't bothered there was almost no meetings and that's when i had the time to play as i called it and so that's how i matched it but the key is it's easy you know we always talk about going down the rabbit hole i found this list of people that attended the conference and i'm going to keep going that's how you waste time and you don't get everything done you need by going down a rabbit hole by setting a goal of example i have a 10 java positions i'm going to source for 10 people for this time and then i'm going to move on to my big data position 10 then this one 10 this one day but keep in mind it's not just one day that's every day monday tuesday wednesday thursday every day that was my plan until i hit all my positions and friday was when i used the time to do the extra stuff that's not the simple and easy and the positions i would be doing it for would be the positions that i still feel i need more candidates for keep in mind of course you know you're working at a company like microsoft somebody else you have to deal with the people who apply so you're going to get a percentage of people from them anyway and those take very little time but i put it on my calendar i also put on my calendar time to reach out to these candidates and interview them and all that so if you put it on your calendar and you have a you have a specific plan in place you can handle it if you don't if you just hap has it i guarantee you're going to go down rabbit holes and by the week's done you're like good lord i had 100 positions i've only sourced for one yeah let me take that let me answer that uh you know for the way i do it is i have literally every day is blocked off from eight to ten for me uh and and i have also every other uh lunchtime blocked off because sometimes i like to source and eat at the same time it's a you know it's a character flaw of mine but what i do is i i have a rotating schedule um based on for example uh again let's take the diversity thing i may have you know for week one each day of of the week you know monday it could be uh african-americans tuesday could be latino thursday it could be lgbta plus another one could be uh people with disabilities neurodiversity another one could be native americans and then i'll rotate them you know it'll be monday tuesday and then next week's next week the days which switch would would be offset by another day just so i i just knew that for me working you know so for every five weeks i'd have each day of the week associated with a certain uh you know type of of of of of category search um and and within that i split it based upon uh the the actual positions it could be you know certain levels of engineers certain levels of leaders and but it was consistent and as dean said as as adam alluded to is literally put it on your calendar uh you know color code the days if you need to but you know having a consistent schedule and you know not pretty much not deviating from that unless you had uh you know the lunch times you use for me usually the special sourcing thing when i i just seem to be more creative when i'm eating i don't know why so uh anybody any uh raising hands let's see who raised the hand carry unmute there you go um no this is all great and so i i totally agree with adam too and that the low hanging fruit is not necessarily the wrong thing to be doing because i am still getting placements i am still getting offers by doing that um so totally get that i do want to not only do that but also still make time for the list and all the things that you guys were just talking about um do you have a well i have on my thursday morning like this block open that that's where i'm supposed to be doing all this creative stuff and it always i'm not sticking by it so it always gets dominated by meetings or something else it's like a special project that my manager wants me to do or something like that so i was just curious how you were all doing it i'm really big with checklists and like making sure i'm checking every box that i want to do for every rack um so with the sprint that we were just talking about you know they're like i'm still working through creating safe search results for targeted companies across the entire country because we can recruit remote employees so it's like there's so much that i have to cover before i even get to the fun stuff so i was just curious
cool any other questions from the from folks here who should we who should we allow to talk dean um let's get pam on the phone okay on whatever we're calling this the zoom zoom
it's like that movie with uh gosh what is wrong with this i'm trying to get
did you get her killing me there she is she's on she's on okay
pam how are you i'm fine so what's uh what's on your sourcing agenda today ah my sourcing agenda today is building out one a sourcing team and then two um sourcing for non-exempt roles in these small nook and cranny towns that uh are really hard to find people that exist in because we have production manufacturing that we're looking for now for everyone in the audience who doesn't know who you are who do you do with whom do you work for and and um how can maybe some people so i work for a company called integris um they're 5800 strong and we do everything from material sciences to um production so your lovely cell phone that you stare at most of the time we actually make the class screens for those
so you're the ones that this is broken no i'm joking so so so what what what what what are some of your really uh challenging uh sourcing roles so i think the biggest challenge i see right now and i will preface this with i am just reached 30 days in i actually worked with dean at lockheed martin and jumped ship to take this role um so i'm creating a sourcing team as i speak as well so if anybody's looking please reach out to me um my shameless plug hey pam pam yes do you have my personal email um i think so okay will you hold the hall of
but still you should not have to ask that question you should say pam email me well i like my way better it's like okay so if you don't have an email and you can't find it you need a new job no i have your email shoot me an email i may have a couple people for you perfect thank you yes ma'am and only being 30 days in with that being said only being 30 days in the biggest challenge i see is in with our material roles our manufacturing our material manufacturing roles um and just where the locations because they're in lovely places like decatur texas and if you're not fail you're familiar with decatur it's 30 minutes outside of arlington or uh chaska minnesota which is 45 minutes outside of minneapolis now but that is from a quality of life area that is that is that is a a high high quality of life area that's good to know i thought it was a soda i want to put people on lovely shifts like second and third and i want you to work three on four off and then four on three off so um you know we're 24×7 shop too so so would you mikey would you be looking for sources in those communities no my sources can be remote they can sit anywhere okay it still would you know it might not be a bad idea you know for for the for the minnesota areas is to to get in touch with paul to bettings i already did i reached out to paul it was my first it was my first reach out and then i got on a couple of the groups around there um it's really for me i think it's just not having dealt with a large non-exempt um group for a long time i'm a little rusty too so i'm just reaching out to resources that i know um to help and just retraining myself you know for me you know when when i've always had to do those those those shift more blue collar for lack of a better word positions it's there are times where really does pay to uh carry will get you in a second it really does pay to be on the ground and you know some things like uh if you know where the you know the wawas are the area or the or the or the shopping centers in the area and and some of you have heard me just heard me at you know doing prisos on this is literally you know there's tear-off sheets you know like dog walkers uh babysitters uh material handlers you know those are the places where where where if you you can get a tremendous amount of play from old school uh you know advertising exactly carry churches ymca respond to source at the y i'm glad you said that because i actually am going out there next week for a career fair and i'm actually going out a couple days early to meet up with the unemployment commission and a cup and some people from the chamber of commerce and stuff as well so but that's exactly what it is so you know all the counties have chambers of converses and and they all have and many many of these do have facebook pages and and other types of social pages yes natalie definitely technical schools of which there are many of them minnesota minnesota is a very technical a technology literate state uh you know you could look at you can look at the extensions from university of minnesota and even some of the smaller schools that that that that are up uh you know a bit north a bit north of it and she's right about flyers you know if you have existing employees you have t-shirts that you can wear in the community you know we're hiring you know the numbers we just upped our employee referral program too so anybody we hire right now we're bringing them on the our employees get a thousand dollar referral but we're also doing five thousand dollar sign-on bonuses too for people that come in and start with us in these particular areas and that is absolutely fabulous yeah but in any consumer marketplace you know where where i love the idea about church but churches or or or or you know folks from my side of the track they're you know the synagogues and things like that the uh you know you know mosques it it they're all every any house of worship yes terry local grocery stores uh whatever they are um that's it and the other thing you can do is you know you can do some co-branding thing there's nothing wrong with identifying some of these um you know coffee places these quick stop things and imprinting the coffee sleeves with information about working for you and and you give them away to delis and so when people every time they grab a cup of coffee they're grabbing an advertisement to work for you that's a beautiful idea i love that i didn't think about that we just did some radio and some newspapers so i saw kerry put radio we just did newspaper and um radio um to see if we can drum up some more because we're growing in this area and we're actually putting in another facility about 20 minutes from chaska and then we have another facility in bloomington as well it's probably one of my largest areas yeah those are fun things let's get someone let's get uh pam let's get some other folks who have their hand her hands raised i'm going to uh bring in natalie right now so uh let me just uh natalie you're up
you're on candy cane hold on she's mutated i know i'm i'm i'm unmutating her trying to at least that's weird what's going on i don't know i'm just trying let me see if i can see maybe you can yeah okay let's see where not to lay oh asked on you take why do i have to ask don mitty i'm allowed okay you're annoying me uh maybe i just promoted okay just promoted panelists would be easiest let's try that one let's see how that works okay i just promoted a panelist natalie you in no she's yeah now uh well adam is but natalie still needs to do it on her end though she's gotta she's gotta be willing to let me ask it on me nope i guess maybe she doesn't want to say anything well that's fine maybe he's changed her mind don't let me un do it okay so well now she's got her hand up again so let's see if we can try this again promote to panelist natalie will be joining the webinar as a panelist we know this thank you for sharing natalie natalie now i don't see her here anymore okay so let's do something else here let's go bring on board i want to promote um if we if if we allow k to talk she'll never stop talking we know that one yeah but then we can go get coffee you know you know who i'm gonna allow i'm gonna i'm gonna bring on um let's bring on because somebody and i can say so much yes yes you can
well how's this one let let's ask the the the folks who are left um what's you know what what other things would you like to know
let me just uh change some of these people to attendees
i'm trying to limit things here a little bit now attendees trying to get the uh uh interface working here a little bit more here well let's bring on you know let's let's bring on k for a second why because i think it's going to be fun okay yes
how are you you guys are my favorite brothers i swear to god i mean i've known you guys for so long but i just really enjoy growing my brain with you guys uh i i don't think when i think i don't think we've given you a whole lot to grow with what what what did we possibly tell you that you did well i i think it you know i just like the perspective of different things but i was going to type this one of the things that um i'm curious about and it could be open to everybody um and what's more irritating than anything in my world is this [ __ ] reaction recruiting and how we talk about it so much and yet we still fall into those habits and even though we have different roles different methods and stuff the bottom line is this reactive recruiting when then we lose all the strategy and all the goals that we talk about at conferences at webinars and stuff so i'm curious on your thoughts about reactive recruiting and how we can start making some changes because i'm honestly i'm at a loss i mean is there something that happened well well okay there's a lot okay so okay before we go any further because not everybody may be on the same street about the definition of what you're saying let's define what you so go and define reactive recruiting first so we're all on the same page here well i think it's that you know we all there's different parts of our companies are either scaling or growing or you know i have so much on my plate and then we have to manage our desks but we don't just manage our desks we manage the candidates we manage the hiring managers we manage resources and stuff like that but we it seems that we tend to over promise and under deliver and put ourselves under a lot of stress because when there's problems we want to put progress we want to put process over process over process and it's almost sort of like plugging the holes and yet we're bleeding profusely so it's like instead of trying to plug the holes because once you take your finger out of that hole it's going to start bleeding again so how do we how do we approach it to where we can truly say work-life balance we can truly say you know we don't we're not going to react to something that's a need before we put the strategy in place and i don't think anybody has the answers but i also think we talk about it but the actions don't speak louder than you know what i mean yeah dean let me let me jump into that one just real briefly is you know i you know i i whenever i i'm talking to a you know someone with a from a technical background an engineer or tech leader whatever i go you know there's there's you know i've been recruiting for 37 years now and primarily in the technology space i know i'm old uh and and and really a lot of interviews and you know and i've learned two things actually i've learned a couple of things about technical people number one tactical people we we live our lives at the intersection of adhd highway and asperger's boulevard and which which is both an intoxicating and maddening cocktail uh but sources are very much really all of us are very similar and you know i know everybody every every attendee here you know we tend to get deep into the weeds and we obsess over things you know we're people pleasers there's there's no equivocation when when it comes to that and and and that is you know very similar to you know to to technical folks you know so you know one of the things that wisdom gives you is if you listen to it is the ability to know when it's okay to not be perfect you know there's this saying i think hugh pratter is one of my favorite writers who wrote a great book called notes on love and courage you know perfectionism is very slow death and and and that is something i think everybody here can probably you know hold on to in in some way shape or form and and and the real challenge to becoming really great in this profession is is in fact knowing when to push back from you know that that seductive lure of booleans and and rabbit holes and tool chrome extensions for finding email addresses and things of that nature and just focusing on on talking to other human beings and and and reveling in all the goodness that that that brings and it just sounds more like a fluffy ted talk but no no no i mean to me i don't i don't i understand what you're saying it's having that ability uh and we're looked at as means and stuff but i'm talking about within our own recruiting function not even our business partners because i think our business partners feed off what we produce and and i and and i do think there's some it's how we talk to each other as you know i'm i'm a big advocate about respect and stuff but i think it's also like when we don't have solutions we just put a body there and expect them to perform and then when they're not performing instead of seeing the entire picture they focus on the person who's not succeeding in their perspective and then we move on and we're not even allowing to look at that whole entire picture and and it's just a common theme and and it's like starts with our recruiting leaders and stuff because i know we have to produce but i think we're we're not approaching it wisely even though there's a lot of talks out there and god knows glenn kathy has talked about data after data after data but it doesn't seem to change the behavior and it drives me nuts because i'm all about change and i know and i know we have to measure success and stuff but are you measuring the right success and if reacting the right way to go i think part of the problem is that a lot of people out there and this is something that came up with somebody i know who runs an agency probably about eight nine years ago is that they they see the data that initial data like as an example football they see how many touchdowns you scored but they don't look at the who what where when how and why behind the date right so out and here's the story the example um he contacted me because he had five recruiters and he was looking at bodies hired as his metrics and one person was only hiring was only hiring 35 and everybody else was hiring 50. so he was going to let that person go and i'm like well wait a minute why what are they hiring look at this and i broke it down to him by the time he was done come to find out that all the people hiring 50 people plus were mainly hiring s debts low end developers the person hiring 35 was all architects and if you looked beyond the number and then looked at the how much money they were making she was bringing in more money with her 35 than all the others with the 50. yeah and that's the problem the problem is you got to make them want to look at the debt data in itself is great okay you got x touchdowns but if they all came from the one yard line what does that really well and i think that's that's the point right i think when people are put into management roles and stuff that base what they are brought up on but the thing is they're not looking at the scale they're not looking at the roles they're not evaluating what it takes i mean what's the point of having a friggin team if you're going to pit each other against each other where measurements i mean i was having a conversation with somebody who's building a sourcing team and all she was focusing on was the number of calls and i'm like but what are they doing what else are they doing to grab talent and stuff and i think we're so busy putting numbers we're thinking at the end result we're not thinking from the beginning and timing to get to those numbers and i think our culture and our technology and stuff is we need to start thinking more holistically and stop focusing on old school metrics because it's not changing anything and we're reacting in a way to where we try to like oh you know we're going to lose recruiters and there is a shortage of recruiters and sources you know what i mean because we're so busy at that number that the sourcers that we're supposed to be investing in and the recruiters we're supposed to invest in people not the freaking numbers well once we invest in people the success will come and how do we measure success and i'm so passionate about and you guys drive this just so you know you bring this out of me because you guys talk about it so great but i think we need to start talking and educating and really supporting different ideas like carrie's trying to build this sometimes you have to fail to be succeed it takes time you're not you're not going to make changes like this overnight and i'm going to use the best example i could think of and you guys and everybody here should know this back in the day there were recruiters that's it then 20 years later they said well maybe we should have people just find people and call them sorcerers but it took 20 years researchers they were called researchers that's my title by the way i am a principal researcher but now they act well and i'm going to break everybody's bubble here but now 20 years more later now they have researchers but they're not doing what you do okay they're doing right finding the people can't find scraping lists finding the contact information like what my son jeremy does like what i do um and so but it takes time and and and and and and the reason it takes time is there are still too many old school thinkers in high positions that refuse to open their minds and broaden their horizons um exactly and i'll say example where i'm working i'm not going to mention where i'm working i'm just where i'm working everybody can figure it out we just had a huge reorg being facilitated by a outside organization coming in to do an analysis of us using old school methodology and they based on our part what was working and now we got something that probably will i give it two years max before we go right back to where we are well and you know dean you say it takes time and stuff like that and we've both been i've been in it for 26 years but i just ex i just wish we talk about it so much how do we place the actions how do we influence because like i have conversations with my leadership i love and respect my leadership but sometimes i don't understand how they come up with the answers or the methods because all they want to do is put programs in place or process over process cause problems the answer i mean there's an answer to that one there there are historical metrics that have permeated into the realm of finance metrics that that describe you know recruiting costs for higher as it is is probably the best example which is probably one of the most nonsensical recruiting metrics because it's it's it's it's historic that is it's always an apples to apples to oranges comparison you know i couldn't care if you say you reduced you know you're crawling about how much you've reduced cost per higher your recruiting mix is different the economy is different the levels are different locations are different etc uh going back
roughly turn of the century we started talking about recruiting efficiency ratio uh which is a way to normalize uh you know it's direct plus indirect cost recruiting divided by compensation recruited and you do the same thing for sourcing and you can do it you you you can you can split it by level you can split it by function you can split it by location business unit however you want and there you have a normalized way of of of of determining it takes you know x sense of a recruiting sourcing dollar to produce one dollar of compensation but hr and this is sure uh still whole and and and finding the finance realm they still hold these whole whole to be truths these historical metrics that don't allow us to to to determine how performance you know you know an entity's performance they're they're they're wholly disconnected we don't push back enough i think it's happening you know the more you the more you know you know one of the things i think i'd like for us to do you know in everyone is is push forth the concepts of metrics that make sense you know metrics for a new era and uh and then let's see where that takes us i think if you know we as people who are i want to be careful i always say this in positions to have some influence put it that way need to realize that we have to be more than just people who have influence but be change agents i mean people i'll give you an example my my where i work um they have a project they don't come to say here's the project here's how you're going to do it they just say dean here's what we need how how can we do it and i create a way to do it yeah um and they listen any metrics you know created i'm involved in creating i always get a group involved because i don't believe any one person's created metrics they don't know what the hell they're talking about anyway um and that includes me sometimes um i we need to be change agents because in the end we're the ones that know and we are people that have some level of influence um and and that's what it's going to take i mean you get a newbie recruiter coming in who has ideas that could change that could be great but because they've been doing it less than a year no one's going to listen to them but everyone like us with 30 how many every year's 30 plus years that steve and i each have been recruiting they'll listen yeah but by the same by the same i'm sorry okay no go ahead you go ahead what i'm saying is it it's it's it's interesting i i um when i was with uh at m t bank uh the last couple years i i i would get involved with the uh the the tech group down in delaware and they had this really neat thing called geeks on fleek and uh you were where every thursday this is before the pandemic they'd retreat uh at 4 30 and go to a bar and drink and just tell you know talk about topics you know tech topics and uh so i i i ran one of these meetings you know because you know techies are my people so um i i like posing a question to uh to to engineers uh during during interviews and it goes something like this just just imagine you're you're at an airport you're allowed to travel uh and you're about ready to board an airplane for a really really long trans-oceanic flight when you suddenly realize as you're about to get into the airplane that it was your team that built the flight control software for the for for the airplane would you still get on the airplane now the the answer gets at what is the role of every individual on that team and one of the things that regardless of how many years that i have that dean has that k has that that that adam pam it's that i have the most important thing that we can do going forward is is listen to the zen mind the beginner's mind and when they make a suggestion just listen to it i mean that's that's the best thing that we can do for this profession going forward is to listen to everyone's voice i don't think that happens though and that's i totally agree and i think i think sometimes change is hard because of what needs to be accomplished but i also think that we can't compare 30 years ago to now because of how technology has brought us to where we are now but i also think that not everybody needs to be in one position to get the results that we need and i and i don't think strategically um and you know these are all cliche words because we talk about them so much it's just that i think we have situations to where you know we're supposed to be in like partnerships and partnerships don't really are partnerships because of the mindset and the stress and everything so it's just more the continuation of conversation because i also think we hire people who are inexperienced and and get intimidated because you know even when you're working on exec team like i do and stuff sometimes the people who are i'm partnering with are intimidated on pushing the hiring manager to make a better decision or how we bring in ideas because a lot of times they're pooh-poohed away and we need to be more confident in what we do in order to make that change and i i really appreciate the conversation guys because i think that's where we should be start working on because not everybody has the one idea of a perfect idea of managing your desk or hiring talent and candidates are actually controlling the space so i mean it's just it just baffles me and i do appreciate your guys input you know uh you know on that note let's let's let's kind of wind up here what what my ask of everyone here is we're going to do this again in two weeks and you know i would we we we're just we were just playing this one by year you know so that you know you know you know dean and steve sourcing playhouse you know we'll talk about the uh the the science and psychology of of sourcing for the future so please bring on board bring next in two weeks from today bring someone who you work with carrie bring your boss before i talk to her okay uh you know pam pam bring um you know bring brings you know you know a new hire adam bring some people uh on board you know the higher tool team you know brings bring some more bring some some of the team by terry same thing you know tiff uh i think sue did sue liam already yeah she's left already but you know send us your questions send us the topics you know we're gonna we want to make this more of a collaborative environment uh where your voice this is the place where i guarantee your voice is going to be heard and keep in mind guys it could be it doesn't have to be quite so esoteric as now it could be just real simple dean steve how can i find hadoop developer or do architects whatever it is we will that's what we're here for we're here to help you guys vent help you guys solve problems help you guys come up with ideas because this is like a great big ideation session that's what it is and and the good thing about it is i have a feeling that the more people who participate the more people who we give a voice to um some of you are going to be speakers i mean down down the line uh you know the you know everyone we have a plan big plan for 2022. uh and uh we want you to be part of that plan so it's up to you so um i guess on that note
we have steve sourcings playhouse have a good week we out later bye
