The Recruitment Hackers Podcast

Matt Lerner is the CEO of a consulting business named SYSTM, which helps early-stage startups grow. In this episode, we explore how fast-paced environments like startups can find the right talent and what pitfalls to avoid. Max Armbruster, the host of the Recruitment Hackers podcast, interviews Matt Lerner. Matt previously supported Max and his company Talkpush through an investment with 500 startups. Matt has since transitioned to be the CEO of a consulting business named SYSTM, which helps early-stage startups grow. Matt's recent activity on LinkedIn has centered around recruiting for fast-paced environments and startups.In their discussion, Max is keen to explore how startups can find the right talent and what pitfalls to avoid. One particular focus is on "defensive candidates." Matt emphasizes that defensiveness in a startup environment can be detrimental. He mentions that he has seen teams become unproductive due to individuals who are not open to feedback or reconsidering their strategies.Matt also speaks about the difference between hiring from big-name brands versus hiring based on skillsets and fit for the startup environment. He advises caution when hiring based solely on the prestige of a company listed on a candidate's resume. Matt believes that while individuals might excel in a corporate environment, they may not necessarily thrive or bring value in a startup setting.Toward the end, Matt shares his favorite interview question which centers around understanding a candidate's mindset, openness to feedback, and willingness to admit and learn from mistakes.

In this special episode of the Recruitment Hackers Podcast, our host Max conducts an insightful conversation with his sister, Rafaela Armbruster, who works as an Admissions Coordinator at UCL. The unique angle of this episode revolves around the parallels drawn between job recruitment and student admissions, both involving evaluating young talents.The discussion extends to personal growth, bias checks during recruitment, and the impact of AI on the admission process. A memorable story narrates an unusual applicant’s experience, highlighting the importance of personal bias checks in admissions or recruitment. Finally, the episode emphasizes the need to understand young talents beyond their brief resumes, demonstrating the intersectionality of both fields. This heartening family affair episode presents unique perspectives, making it a must-listen.

In this episode, Max Armbruster, CEO of Talkpush, interviews Sudeepta Parasar, CEO and Co-founder of Refersecout, a platform that simplifies and gamifies employee referral programs. They discuss the benefits of employee referrals, the challenges of managing a referral program, and the various stages of program sophistication. Sudeepta shares his insights on using gamification to engage employees, reward participation, and increase the success rate of referrals. They also explore the role of technology in streamlining referral processes and improving employee engagement. Tune in to learn about how Refersecout is transforming the way companies approach referral programs and the value of incorporating gamification in your hiring process.Here are 7 actionable insights from the interview: Importance of employee engagement: For a successful referral program, it is crucial to keep employees engaged and motivated to participate. Ensuring that employees are invested in the process will lead to better referrals and increased hiring success rates.Reward participation: Even if a referral doesn't result in a hire, consider rewarding employees for their participation to encourage continuous involvement. Offering incentives can drive employees to actively participate in the referral program.Gamification of the referral process: Introducing a point-based system or leaderboard can make the referral program more engaging and fun. Employees can earn points for participating and for their referrals' progress in the hiring process, which can later be redeemed for rewards.Use technology to streamline the process: Utilizing technology like Refersecout can help automate and manage referral programs more efficiently. This can free up time for HR professionals and improve the overall experience for employees participating in the program.Offer both monetary and non-monetary rewards: Combining monetary rewards with non-monetary incentives like vacation time or giveaways can create a more attractive and motivating referral program for employees.Continuously update and refine your referral program: Regularly evaluate your referral program's performance and make adjustments as needed. This will help you maintain a well-defined program that yields the best results.Monitor referral quality: Be mindful of the quality of referrals, and consider awarding more points for higher-quality candidates who progress further in the hiring process. This encourages employees to submit well-suited referrals, increasing the likelihood of successful hires.

In this riveting episode, Max Armbruster, the host of Talkpush Podcast, engages in a deep conversation with Dror Gurevich, the CEO of Velocity Network Foundation, a non-profit building the Internet of Careers™. The discussion delves into the transformative potential of blockchain in the world of recruitment, career verification, and how this new technology can shape the future of work.Dror introduces the Velocity Network Foundation, an organization that aspires to democratize and decentralize career credential verification, enabling individuals to have complete ownership of their career records. He elaborates on the network's commitment to privacy, user control, and transparency, discussing the importance of having a shared, trusted infrastructure for both individuals and organizations.Gurevich discusses the inherent issues in the traditional methods of career verification, including the time-consuming process of background checks and the challenge of obtaining accurate information. Blockchain, as he argues, offers a solution by allowing immediate, verifiable access to employment records, educational certificates, and other crucial career credentials.The conversation also explores the promising concept of a Career Wallet, where people can store, manage and share their professional credentials, giving them control over their own data. This would eliminate the need for third-party verification, making hiring processes more efficient and reliable.Max and Dror also touch on the potential of this technology in developing regions and emerging markets, such as Africa, where formal employment records might not exist. The ability to formally record and verify employment history can potentially uplift these economies by enhancing employability and job security.In the latter part of the podcast, Gurevich opens up about a past hiring mistake he made due to inadequate data and verification, reinforcing the need for the solutions that Velocity Network Foundation aims to offer. He emphasizes the emotional and energy cost of hiring the wrong person, highlighting the potential of blockchain technology to minimize these errors.This episode underscores the potential of blockchain technology to revolutionize the recruitment industry by enabling secure, efficient, and self-sovereign verification of career credentials. Listen in to learn how Velocity Network Foundation is leading this change, and how it might redefine the future of careers.

In this podcast episode, Max and Daniel Callaghan of Veremark explore the world of background screening for employment and how blockchain is making the process more secure and cost-effective for both job seekers and employers. They also highlight the problems facing the background screening industry and why background checks are important for employment in various sectors.

In this podcast episode, Max Armbruster interviews Robert Cohen, Talent Acquisition Ecosystem Manager at Philip Morris International. The conversation focused on the need for companies to rethink early talent acquisition by looking beyond traditional qualifications and focusing more on motivation and potential. Their conversation also highlights the need for technological solutions that can help recruiters screen candidates for potential and eliminate human bias. Such solutions can also help recruiters manage the recruitment process more efficiently, particularly for global organizations.

MaxHello, everybody. Welcome back to the recruitment hackers podcast. I'm your host, Max Armbruster. And for my first guest of 2023 I'm delighted to welcome Gustavo Serbia who is the head of talent - correct me if I'm wrong. Yes, I got that. Head of talent at Haircuttery, one of the leading salons. I mean, beauty and hairstyling salons nationwide. Please -  Actually I'll let Gustavo introduce what the group does but they do a lot of haircuts; I know that much yet. And so we're gonna get into the art of hiring stylists and understanding the art of recruiting hairstylists and stylists in general. What can you do to attract this particular audience and to avoid making hiring mistakes? And talk about how that practice may be disrupted by technology, of course. Gustavo, thanks for joining. And - yeah, please; what did I get wrong? In my intro?GustavoWell, I'm the head of HR for Haircuttery. And I oversee the entire HR function, including recruiting. I have a wonderful team that works day in and day out to try to find a stylist. Yes, we are a salon chain. It's a privately owned salon chain in the US - 500 salons in 10 states and about 5000 employees as a whole. And, you know, I like to also give a little bit of framework that while we're in the business of finding stylists, some of the audience may not necessarily find that relatable because they're not looking for stylists, because it's so specialized. But we're really in high volume. So we are in the high volume business of hiring. We just happen to be hiring - 99% of our hires are really stylists that are working at the salon, cutting hair, colouring hair, etc. And as you can see, hair is not required to work in the company. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here.MaxFor those audio listeners here, Gustavo has a very shiny cranium.GustavoYep, yeah.Max Probably set up the lights just so you have a third eye.GustavoExactly. Yeah. So it looks like a halo effect.Max Right? Well. So, to put us in the mindset of what a hairstylist is, and does, I mean, we are talking about somebody who is holding a knife next to someone's face for 8/10 hours a day chatting… And so it has to be - I mean, these are skills that are sort of interpersonal communication skills, character skills that are very hard to capture in the written form, right? So a resume is not going to tell you that much. So what are you looking for? Exactly?Gustavo Yep. So it's a combination of number one, you got to have a license, if you don't have a license, we can't consider  you. You have to be licensed in order to perform what we need. And number two, we're looking for personality, we know that they're going to be behind the chair interacting with a guest, so they have to have personality that allows them to connect with the with the with a guest. Give me a second. Give me a second hold on the recording. Got it? Go ahead. Okay,Maxso he asked me the question. Yeah. So you said you're looking. So I'm gonna ask the question again. We'll take it from the top. Yeah. So yeah. So hiring hairstylist, who we looking for? I imagine that the skills necessary you remember the question, I asked her the question about blah, blah, blah. It's not something you can get on paper. And then you started your answer. And we'll start over again from there. So I don't have to ask the question again. Are you looking for scanning now?GustavoYeah, so number one thing we look, obviously you got to have a license. In the US, you have to be licensed in order to cut hair. So that's number one thing. You don't have a license, it’s going to be hard for us to consider you. After that -Max Hold on; if I’m a - if I wanna be a hairstylist and get the license, how long is that process? Is that something you can just apply online or how does that work?GustavoNo, you have to go to school. You have to go to cosmetology school. There are a number of hours that have to be completed depending on the state. Some states have 1000 hours, others have 1500 hours. Yeah, and they have to pay.Max  It’s a higher bar than getting a driving license.GustavoYes, yes, definitely. Well, you know, obviously, we want to protect the consumer. But each state does it slightly differently on how they go about it. Like there's not a consistent application across all 50 states. So we have to understand what the requirements are in some states versus others. So, once you have a license, or if you're in school, and you're going to graduate, let's say, within 90 days, you're going to obtain your license, we want to talk to you. And then the second thing is personality, right? You know, a lot of the stylists that go into the industry, some of them do it because they're exploring what they want to do. Others like the whole idea of the creative process. But regardless, if you're the creative kind, or the one that is looking for a job, or the one that is exploring what to do in the future, you're going to be talking to people. And because you're going to be talking to people, we give you commissions, in our case, but in the industry, it’s very common for you to get commissions out of product sales, you have to have the ability to interact with the client.Max Yeah, it must be the nicest people in the world who want to work in that profession. Because, you know, as you said, like you're interacting nonstop, although, I mean, you have to be able to read the room, sometimes I go get a haircut, and I really don't want to talk to somebody, but they still chat me up.GustavoYes, we tell our stylist, you gotta read what the guests want, right? Some, this is a very intimate interaction, if you think about it, I'm in your space for at least 20 to 30 minutes, perhaps longer. I'm touching you. So you have to be conscious of the space, you have to be conscious of the body language that the person is giving you. But it's also a relationship that can be lasting years, because you may decide to go to the same stylist; my mother went to the same stylist, I mean, since I was nine years old, until a couple of years ago when her stylist passed away. That's the type of relationship that we're hoping our stylists are going to create with a guest. So that guest comes back to us instead of going somewhere else. But outside of that; obviously, we'll look at availability, where can you work? Because you know, we need to accommodate when the guest is there. We don't look at work, where have you worked, to make a decision. It’s really irrelevant for us, your work history, from the standpoint of: you have a license, you have the capability? Let's put you behind the chair.MaxYeah, see if that works. And are there some - you talked about character being important. So I gather from that, that you don't want a hardcore introvert for a job like this. You want somebody who's able, who enjoys interacting. What are some other sort of personality traits that you'd be particularly on the lookout for? And follow-up question, ...

Hello, welcome back to the Recruitment Hackers podcast. I'm your host, Max Armbruster. And today, inviting to the show for the first time, Mr Martyn Redstone, who is an Uber geek, and an analyst of the TA tech world and who has been working in the world of recruitment chatbots and conversational AI, for as long as the industry is, which is only about five or six years but has been consistent in his interest of finding ways to connect with candidates faster through the use of technology. And so today's discussion will be about that exactly; like how - what's the next step for talent acquisition in terms of treating candidates, like customers and getting a little bit closer to them? And what can we learn from the world of consumer marketing? So that we can - because usually, recruitment is a little bit behind consumer marketing. Recruitment marketing is usually a few years behind consumer marketing. So what can we learn from the leading technologies in that space and the best practices in consumer marketing? Notably, because Martyn has recently spent some time working with Hootsuite, which is a company which specializes in omnichannel marketing and delivering messages to different channels like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. So there's a - yeah, there's probably some good parallels that can be drawn from there, or that's what we're hoping for. And finally, Martyn, for your introduction. Martyn is also the founder of Bot Jobs, which is a job board for people who little bit - who are in love with bots, and who prefer to talk to bots than to talk to humans. So they can go to that job board and they can find other - they can find opportunities for people like them. Is that a fair summary? Martyn?I think so. I think so. Yeah. And, just for the benefit of everyone else, I did give Max permission to call me an Uber geek. So it's not a derogatory term. Very proud of that, actually. But yeah, no, thanks for the introduction. Yeah. So, Bot Jobs, just to clarify is a job board for conversational AI professionals. So everything from Conversation Designers through to Engineers, Software Developers, Marketers, Salespeople, anything to do with that conversational AI ecosystem. It's a bit of fun, but it's enjoyable. Great to see the trends and keep my toes dipped into the world of recruitment as well. So when we look at the kind of conversational AI world, hiring, still going like the clappers. In the - on the tech vendor side of things, we're still seeing hiring in kind of the smaller and medium-sized tech businesses, the ones that have already gone through, they're kind of their seeds, their seed rounds, their series A's, you know, they're still got cash, they're still growing. And some of them are doing exceptionally well from a growth perspective. And they're still hiring like the clappers. What we're also seeing, quite interestingly is large corporates that are now realizing that conversational AI has to be part of their strategy, their business strategy, and so they're starting to hire internal conversational AI teams to run that customer experience, customer context strategy. So that's very, very interesting. But to go back on your, on your point about job creators and job destroyers, I think that's a, I think that's something that I've been dealing with for the last five or six years that you've mentioned, I've been in this world where people say, oh, you know, chatbots, you know, and automation, it's just, it's just going to replace people, it's just going to take over people's jobs. And that's what you're out for, you're out to kind of replace recruiters with bots. Now, interestingly, over the last five or six years, I've never actually really seen that. I've never seen - And we've seen examples where chatbots in the retail world or in the recruitment world have automated up to like 85% of all conversations that happen. And yet, we haven't seen 85% of recruiters or 85% of customer service people being laid off because of that. And a great example is a global sports retailer who were able to literally turn off their customer service telephones because their conversational AI solution was so strong, they were able to turn off all their phone lines and deal with every single inbound inquiry. Over - actually, Facebook Messenger was where most of their conversations happened. But actually, what that meant was they realigned their customer service team into providing higher - providing service into higher value conversation. So conversations where they can upsell where somebody is then transferred to a person to say, you know, I - wondering if this is in stock, or something that the conversational AI couldn't cope with, where they had the ability to actually increase the revenue coming into the business through customer service. So a lot of businesses now are seeing customer service as a revenue centre, rather than a cost centre, because they're able to actually concentrate now on higher-value conversations rather than the just - the mundane stuff that can be automated. I see that happening in talent acquisition as well, where we're going to find that we're when we start taking away some of the more mundane repetitive stuff from recruiters that they're able to become more high-value partners to the business and to the hiring managers and to their candidates as well. Which I think is going to happen. I don't see it as a race to replace people.Yeah, yeah I mean, I would say that there is some truth to automation, killing some jobs. But of course, recruiters have the EQ and the experience who reinvent themselves and be relevant in a more automated world, because certain things will not be automated. So yeah, that's the projected outcome for us is that they'll still be there. Recruiters will still be there to sell the job. They'll still be there to get people excited. They may not be needed for the repetitive you know, data collection piece of it. You mentioned the - some layoffs at Alexa and Salesforce Einstein products, but that generally, bots are doing well. The corporate world is buying more. I’m, wondering about, you know, the Hootsuite experience, if that's not too confidential, if you can share - what's been the adoption of Heyday, you said it was their conversational product and what - why did they decide to step you know, or slow down there?Yeah, that's a good question. Obviously, if you appreciate some things, I can talk about something. Yeah. But yeah, ultimately, Heyday was focused on e-commerce and retailers. So it was a very niche product. But the uptake was always great, you know, every single retailer, especially during the pandemic, what what was, what was obvious was that every brick and mortar retailer that had shops couldn't have their shops anymore because of lockdowns and things like that. So every retailer became an E-commerce business. And so they need to do more with less which we know that everyone tries to do in times of economic shock. So obviously a conversational AI tool that's focused on e-commerce and can do things like not only, not only answering FAQs, all those kinds of standard things, but also being able to sell things from within chat, so adding things to your basket doing checkouts, but also keeping people updated on their order status, as you know, I think if you speak to most retailers, is 70 to 80% of all of their customer service inquiries are going to be where's my order? So being able to just do it, you can automate that is a very, very powerful - creates a very powerful business case. So absolutely, you know, the adoption was there. The c...

[00:00:00]Max: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to The Recruitment Hackers Podcast. And I am delighted to welcome on the show today, Quincy Valencia, formerly known as the Queen of bots. Today, the VP and Research Director for Ventana Research, and previously working at AMS, at CLO and ADP and a long, long career in recruitment and talent acquisition technology. And so I'm really happy that Quincy agreed to come to our show, to talk about some of the trends from the year that's ending now; 2022, for those listeners who are listening to this podcast in the future, and where we might be, we said we would talk about a few trends. [00:00:49]So expect a conversation on hyper-personalization of the candidate experience, consolidation of the tech vendors, TA tech vendors, and what it means for the market and for the candidates. And perhaps we'll talk a little bit about the bots and conversational AI from its origin, or let's say the recent history of the last five or six years, and what the near future may look like. So, Quincy, welcome to the show.[00:01:26]  Quincy: Thank you so much for having me, Max, I really appreciate it. I love these kinds of conversations, especially with people in the industry that I respect and admire. And that would be you, you fall in that category. So thank you.[00:01:37] Max: Well, you're too kind. It's an honor to be in that industry. And it's great that we live in a world where you're in South Carolina, I'm in Ireland, and we can talk to our global audience about stuff that nobody cares about.[00:01:51]Quincy: Somebody cares about it, you and I care about it. So if nothing else, we can go back ourselves and listen to ourselves talk to each other and be very excited about it.[00:02:00] Max: Okay, a deal. So, well, before we get started, perhaps a word about Ventana Research. What's this organization that you joined earlier this year? And what kind of services do you deliver? Who should be coming to talk to you? In what situation?[00:02:20]Quincy: Yeah, so Ventana research is celebrating its 20th year in business as of this year, it's a boutique technology analyst firm, and the primary focus is tech. And we have several coverage areas including, not just HCM tech, which I own and lead that practice, but data analytics, digital innovation, CX, so we kind of span the board there with different areas of technology that we cover. And we do primary research, we do thought leadership, consulting, advisory, so on and so forth, all the things you would expect of an analyst firm. And it's an exciting place to be. It's a fun, interesting time to be in this industry as well.[00:03:05] Max: Are your services called upon when somebody does a big RFP? And they want somebody to write the RFP?[00:03:13]  Quincy: No, we don't write RFP, but we do…. Yeah, sorry. We will help people evaluate those RFPs and responses. And, you know, our clientele are the vendors, certainly, but also end users that will be using products too. So we have a great mix, we just recently verticalized our entire product offerings, and now we're looking at specific verticals like healthcare, manufacturing, financial services and retail and several others that we have expertise in within our organization. So it's just another lens to look at the products and services that we deliver into the market.[00:03:54]Max: I think I'm gonna latch on to this as a segue to our first industry topic. What was the word? Verticalization.[00:04:03]Quincy: Verticalization, yeah.[00:04:04]Max: So verticalization of talent acquisition, I think is a real thing. It's not just a bunch of syllables. I think it's happening.[00:04:12]Quincy: That's an actual thing. I agree with you. Now, you never have to say the word again.[00:04:17] Max: We agree about the thing. So I first noticed it a few years ago, and I saw some ATSs pop up specialized in hiring drivers, of all things.[00:04:28] Quincy: Yeah. [00:04:28]Max: But now it seems like there are ATSs for healthcare companies, for retail specialists and others. Yeah. What are you seeing in the market and how verticalized is the industry now?[00:04:44]Quincy: So I see the exact same things that you have. But if you look at what the issues are in recruitment for some of those industries, they're parallel. And so you don't necessarily need one TA tech for just healthcare or one just for retailer, or one just for hospitality. You look at what are the issues that arise within those industries that are the same. So if it's high volume, low barrier to entry, high volume of transaction, those are the types of things that you want to look for when you're looking for technology. And so in some cases, once you may have started out just as, hey, we're going to start in quick service restaurants, or we're going to start in retail, or we're going to start in whatever, they're quickly bringing in different industries into their organization that they're marketing to because they can support those just as well. [00:05:38]I think the only one that I would say probably deserves its own is drivers, because that's an interesting beast, the way you market to them and sell to them and contact them and the way they can come back to you and what you need, and the regulations and documentation and all of the verifications that you need is a little bit different. But, I can see why there was a need, you know, for some of the players in the market, but I think a lot of it continuing the trend is a little bit of consolidation, because, again, you can start marketing to, hey, I'm just going to do hospitality. And you see that you have the opportunity to expand your reach by bringing in other verticals into that same business that operate similarly.[00:06:19]Max: Yeah, I mean, from a vendor's perspective, our perspective, we knew there were some little bits and pieces missing, for us to be relevant in some industries, and you add them progressively as you go. And, of course, you know, it's a go-to-market strategy. Initially, it makes sense to keep talking to the same people over and over again, until you've established a good position in that market. But, at the same time, considering that recruitment platforms are becoming integrated with assessment vendors, and, you know, assessment vendors are more specialized. So, that makes a stronger case for saying, you need a recruitment software that just does healthcare, just does, you know, logistics, for example.[00:07:10]  Quincy: I don't know. I mean, I think it depends on the type of assessment that they're crawling into bed with, for lack of a better term. Because if you look at the tr...

Max: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Recruitment Hackers Podcast. I'm your host, Max Armbruster. And today on the show, James Ellis from Employer Brand Labs.Ellis: He got it. He got it.Max: Yes. James is an expert in helping employer brands stand out from the crowd. And today we decided we'd have a conversation for you, our audience on this topic on employer branding and specifically how you can gently indicate to some people that this is not the right place for them. And how many employers sometimes fall into this trap of trying to welcome everybody? And so they end up standing out for nobody and James, thanks for joining. And how did you end up in this very specific field of employer branding? Did you come in through marketing or from recruiting?Ellis: I did Max. And first off, thanks for letting me join this. I'm looking forward to this conversation. But yes, most people in Employer Brand come from two routes. They come from either the recruiting side where they realize that they have a different kind of point of view from most recruiters, some successful recruiters. And that means they don't really succeed as greatly as recruiters and they find that there's a space called Employer Brand where their skills do make sense. The rest of us come from marketing where we realize that marketing has been done and it's a machine.You go to school; you learn your four or five Ps. You apply them every day. It's all the fun stuff in the tactics or in the insight and that's great. And try not going to downplay marketers because I think they're amazing and they do amazing work, but this is the tiniest slice of marketing in which marketing isn't about more. It's the only kind of marketing and branding in which more is actually worse, right? If you're selling an ice cream cone and you sell a million ice cream cones, your employer of the month, they're going to put your name on a face, on a poster. It's going to be great.You're a recruiter and you get a thousand applicants. You should think about another line of work. You have made a poor choice; you've done something wrong. And so that to me is the fine crux of what employer brand is and why it's interesting and fascinating and still has so much to uncover, to really understand what it's all about. Right now, even like seasoned, respected Employer Brand professionals argue all the time over just basic ideas because we still haven't figured it all out. And that's what makes me so excited about the field. Even though it's only a couple of thousands of us. Max: Well I guess jumping on the question, the number that you just mentioned that employer branding would be, you have to right-size it and if you have a thousand applicants per position, you've wasted some resources.Ellis: Yeah.Max: Perhaps, I could challenge that a little bit by saying that well, if you haven't paid too much for the thousand candidates, then that's all right.Ellis: Well here's the deal. The problem is often that there is a gap between hiring managers and recruiters. The hiring manager says I need a, whatever it is. It's a nurse, it's an electrician, it's a data scientist. It's a litter of people, whatever that thing is and they think that's enough information as if all nurses and data scientists and electricians are the same and they are absolutely not. Anybody who's met three nurses goes, oh wow, they are all different. And they have very different skill sets, but they also have very different approaches to how they do that work.The hiring manager doesn't want to get into that. So they just throw the requisition over to the recruiter who says, okay, so who are you looking for? They want someone great. And then they walk away to do their day job because they're busy, right? They've got stuff to do. And the recruiter says, I don't know what the hiring manager wants. So I'm going to write a job ad, add a job description, and a job posting and those things are all slightly different. And we don't have to get into that today, but they write it to be so generic and that opens the door so wide. Is that anybody who can pretty much spell their last name is encouraged to apply? It just gets crazy.You've opened the doors and the metaphor of course is always, you're trying to find a needle in a haystack. And you're trying to say, well look, if I get a thousand or a hundred people to apply, I'll find that needle. But now we're in a world where we need more needles and the answer to creating more needles isn't to make bigger haystacks. It's not how needles work. That's not how needles are created. That's not how needles are found. The goal of good recruiting is when you have enough information, and that means about what the team's all about, what the company rewards, what they want to be motivated for and rewarded by, and what the tasks are, what the future of that job might be. The ultimate situation, the platonic ideal of recruiting is you really only get two candidates to apply. The person you hire, who is amazing, and the person you don't hire who is almost equally as amazing and you put them in your back pocket because you know, one day you're going to want them. And you only have that second person. So the hiring manager feels like they made a choice, right? That's all it is. Everything after that is time the recruiter now has to spend burning up, filtering through resumes and filtering through CVs saying, nope, nope, nope, nope. Or worse yet, it's time the interview loop has to spend on the sixth candidate to say, yeah, no, not quite because they haven't communicated what they're actually looking for.Max: Yeah, well, James, I mean, there are tools available to--Ellis: There are.Max: -- do a lot of selection, but I guess you're right in the sense that the hiring manager ideally would in a dream situation, would just have two or three to choose from. Ellis: Yeah. Max: I think it's also the recruiter's job to expand a little bit and we're in contradictions here. You're saying, narrow it down, get it down to this one. Now, two perfect profiles, but I would say, maybe the recruiter can expand a little bit on the definition and say--Ellis: Yeah.Max: -- well, you're looking for a nurse, to take your healthcare example with all the professional credentials, certification, that lives 20 minutes away from the hospital, et cetera, et cetera. This perfect candidate when probably doesn't exist.Ellis: Probably not.Max: And so then oftentimes they have to stretch and therefore, I guess play the numbers game. Now let's go a little bit broader.Ellis: Yeah. And I think my position is very extreme simply because I think the pendulum swung too far on we've made it so easy for anybody to apply. Like I could use my elbow and just hit an apply button and click, connect to LinkedIn. Yes, I accept. Okay, I've applied for this job. You don't want to hire me. I don't do that job, but you've made it so easy that I might as well. And so I want to swing the pendulum back to say, look, it's not about making things easy. It's really about how do you speak to this job. How do you speak to this opportunity in such a way that the person who isn't just going to be okay at this or even good at this, but the person who is that magical unicorn, we all know purple...

Max: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the recruitment hackers podcast. I'm your host, Max Armbruster. And today, dialing in from Johannesburg, South Africa, I'd like to welcome now to the show Vanessa Raath, who is a global talent sourcing trainer and our paths almost crossed in London a couple of weeks ago. She's a world traveler. And we're going to talk about the difficult art of planting doubts in the minds of unsuspecting candidates and talents. And how do you turn a passive job seeker into an active one? How do you mess up their world?Vanessa: How do you play with their minds?Max: That's it. How do you play with their minds? So Vanessa, thanks for joining me for this, hopefully, entertaining discussion.Vanessa: Sure.Max: And before we get going, could you tell the audience a little bit about your background? How did you end up in this recruitment function? And as a global talent sourcing trainer? What was the journey to get you there?Vanessa: Awesome. Well, first of all, Max, thanks for having me. It's great to be here. Always nice to be a guest on a different podcast. So my journey was an interesting one. I've done quite a few things in my career. I'm actually a qualified teacher, which leads into me working now as a trainer and helps immensely. I've also worked as a scuba diving instructor in Thailand. So you pick it up and pretty much done it.I've taught unruly school kids in the UK, taught unruly holidaymakers how to scuba dive in Southeast Asia and in East Africa, came back to South Africa and kind of fell into recruitment like everyone does. Went for an interview at a recruitment agency, and they said, why don't you think about recruitment, and I was like, I'm not sure whether I've got the wardrobe, but I'll give it a bash and see how I go.Vanessa: And the rest is history. I did 13 years working in both the recruitment agency space as well as finishing off doing internal head of talent acquisition for a tech company, and that is where I pretty much taught myself how to source because I realized I couldn't find tech talent, just relying on job boards and LinkedIn anymore. And it was time to actually branch out, look for passive talents in different places where they were spending their time.And yeah, getting into the psyche of your reach out and persuading people to leave jobs that they were probably really happy in in order to come and join your organization. So three and a half years ago, I launched my own business, and that's what I've been doing ever since. So yeah. Good times. I'm very happy.Max: It sounds like your background as a teacher would be perfect training--Vanessa: Absolutely.Max: -- to go into training. And then, of course, your natural curiosity. And what I heard is like you were driven by the needs of the business like we need to go--Vanessa: Absolutely.Max: --go beyond Indeed and LinkedIn, which is a lot of what your training is focused on, I gather. So if people want to find out how to source talent outside of the beaten track, they should come to you rightVanessa: Yes.Max: --for new ideas. Now, let's talk a little bit about those passive job seekers, people who are maybe never heard about you before, and didn't even know that they were looking for a job.Vanessa: Until I found them and told them that they were looking for a new job.Max: You are like, hey, I've got news for you buddy. So the transition from the awareness stage to the consideration stage, which is one that I guess, if it happens smoothly, in a perfect world, you would just send a job description, and they would fall in love with it. And then they'd be like, well, great. Yes, I love the package. I love the job description.Vanessa: Now you see that sounds like recruiting was 10 years ago, and it was super easy, and we all should have worked harder, and we all should have made more commission and retired sooner. Now the game has changed. The goalposts are different because sending a candidate a job description isn't good enough anymore, because you first got to persuade the candidates that they need to leave the job that they're in.So you're now selling to both candidates and clients. Because before, it was easy enough to go and find these people on job boards, they were on the market, they were putting themselves out there, but now the landscape of recruitment has changed, and now everyone's kind of passive talents, which has made our jobs so much more difficult.Max: Yeah. The fact that they were maybe less actively looking, is that observation based on data? Because it seems like everybody's on, in my world, everybody's on LinkedIn all the time. But I guess it depends on the kind of talent pools you're going after. Because I'm dealing with HR professionals. So of course, they're on LinkedIn.Vanessa: Beautiful. So you and I are both so lucky because our target database is HR and recruiters and those people are on LinkedIn all day, every day, right? So when I'm trying to sell my training to recruiters, that's where I'm posting. But if you've got someone who's a Java developer, why would they go to LinkedIn? The only thing that's going to happen is that they're going to be harassed by recruiters trying to recruit them.That’s not going to enhance their career. If a Java developer was to spend some time on GitHub, and they could look at other people's code, they could learn from other developers, that would be much more beneficial to them and their careers. So that's what we've got to think about, who's on which platforms more than others.Max: So, maybe walk us through the journey of engaging with somebody on GitHub. For example, somebody who's not looking for a job, because it sounds extremely creepy to me that I'm an engineer trying to inspire my work. And randomly someone is contacting me a little bit out of the blue. So how do you make it less out of the blue?Vanessa: This happens all day on LinkedIn too remember, it's not a platform thing. So my training is all kind of like, try and find someone's email address, because I prefer to send someone an email than in-mail. So on GitHub, for example, you can't actually even connect with developers, they've taken away that functionality, you cannot message someone through the platform. So you have to find an email address.So for me, when I reach out to a candidate, I'm never going to say, I just saw you on GitHub. I'd maybe say, I saw you on GitHub, I had looked at your Twitter feed, well done on something you'd achieved, and also watched your training video on YouTube around how to build a new repository using Java, something along those lines. So it's more of a holistic view of, I've really done my homework about you, I've looked at you on all of these platforms, let's start chatting. And that kind of gets a lot of attention and a lot of response from candidates because I've gone the extra mile.Max: Personal.Vanessa: Yeah, and I've personalized my outreach message. So first of all, we've got to work on getting a better response rate from passive talent, which is something that most of the teams that I'm...

Max: Hello, and welcome back to the Recruitment Hackers Podcast. I am your host, Max Armbruster, and today on the show, I'm delighted to welcome someone who is a veteran of the industry. Sorry, Steven, it has to be said. The Founder, Chief Visionary Officer for College Recruiter. We'll give Steven a chance to introduce College Recruiter and what they do, but I'm excited to have a conversation with Steven about what is happening in the world of campus recruitment and university hiring and all of those activities that kind of used to require a travel budget.And so what, what happened over the last couple of years, what's gonna come to us in the future, and how do we keep hiring young talent without breaking the bank without it costing what it used to cost, basically. That's what we'll be talking about. So, Steven, welcome to the show.Steven: Well, thank you very much, Max. I think the word veteran is code for extreme age. Okay but that's cool. With age comes wisdom, and at some point, I'm hoping to have both, not just the former.Max: Age is just surviving, surviving everything that could have happened and all those buses that could have hit youSteven: All those I’ve tried have to dodge.Max:   So yeah, it's a compliment of course. You’ve been running college recruiters since, your LinkedIn says since November, 1991. Pre-internet so well, how did you end up in that space? Cause I saw from your background that you come from the legal, from being a law clerk and studying law and being a law graduate. Right? So you're a lawyer.Steven: Yes. I like to say I'm fully recovered. Family members would definitely disagree and that's fine. I'll Sue them.So in 1991, I had graduated from law school and was clerking for a couple of judges. And it's a pretty common thing recent grads from law school do. It's, kind of almost the equivalence of like a residency program for positions. You know, you go, you get that formal education and it kind of gives you like an internship kind of a year, but you're paid for it.You're paid pretty decently for it. The work is really interesting but during that year, a friend of mine reached out to me and tried to get me to join his small business, which I had actually started the small business when I was in college, when I was in undergraduate school, he took it over, tried to get me back in and that kind of got my entrepreneurial bug going again. And so in 91, while I was working full time as a law clerk, I got the business that college recruiter grew out of started part-time and what it was for a few years, it was publishing maps of college and university campuses and selling the advertising around the borders to restaurants, retailers, et cetera.That then led into publishing employment magazines, where the magazines I gave them away for free to career service offices. They gave them away free to students and grads. And the revenues came from employers paying to advertise their jobs. And then in 96, this thing called the internet came along. And over the next few years, we gradually got rid of all of our print publications. And so since 2000, it has been the job board, collegerecruiter.com.Max: Right. I'm gonna show my age by telling you that in 2000 I was working for a company called Zip Davis and I was working for a computer shopper magazine. So I was there for the slaying, the final days of computer list, people buying computers on listings and you know every month we would lose advertisers. But I'm sure the CNET networks was able to recuperate some advertising on the other end, but yeah it was a time of just destruction, all over the place. And I guess there must have been one year when you went from 80- 20 to 20-80.Steven: Yeah, 1999 was the year that we shut down the maps, which were ridiculously profitable. You know, I think in 98, the maps provided something like 80% of our revenue. Sorry. I think it was 80% of our profit with only 20% of the revenue and about 5% of my time. It was painful to give that up, but the writing was on the wall. It's like, you know, you give this up now and work from a position of strength and cannibalize your own sales.Or somebody's gonna do that to you.Max: And fortunately, you were young too.Steven: Yeah. I was young and, and I mean, my wife and I had a couple of kids at that point. We ended up with three, but, it is a different situation at that point than, you know, when you're still fairly early in your career, you're, you're better able to take on risks. Uh, everything else being equal.Max: Yeah. So, college recruiter has been, is it, can I call it a job board? A market?Steven: Yeah, Max: I know it's not a sexy term, but like a marketplace for young talents?Steven: yeah. You know, it's not sexy, but one thing about job boards, is that they work. Yeah. They, really deliver, the good ones, they deliver really great value. They've been around for a long time. Without a doubt, the industry has its haters. The haters, the most vocal ones tend to be those, with skin in the game, the ones that are competing against the job boards for the same budget. And so you see third party recruiters talking about how awful job boards are and how nobody uses job boards and blah, blah, blah.It's like, well, okay. If your whole focus is on recruiting C-suite executives, then yeah, job boards are not the place for you, but if you're recruiting a lot of relatively early career talent at scale, there aren't too many more efficient ways of getting that opportunity in front of the candidate. There are loads of ways, including Talkpush of then taking that candidate who has discovered the opportunity, who's discovered your organization and converting them into an applicant or converting that applicant into a hire. There are loads of ways out there that do that better than a job board would. But that initial, “I don't know who I wanna work for”, “I may not even know what kind of position I'm looking for”, I don't just don't think there's anything better out there than job boards for that.Max: mm-hmm yeah, I've been a promoter of social media for sourcing at high volume for a long time. And, I think it's effective, if done right. And, you know, depending on the geographies, but if you're in a college town and you're targeting a specific age bracket, I think it can be very effective for jobs that are suitable for a large trench of the population.But instead of taking it from the employer's perspective and we take it from the job seeker perspective, then yeah, the benefits of this sort of virtual career fair that you get in a job board is it's unmatched. The only thing that was close to it maybe was Facebook jobs, but they shut down in March that I think that was, that could have been a good, uh, Yeah, maybe another job board killer.I know there’s been a lot through the, over the years who have come and gone.Steven: yeah, I was a fan of the concept, and I think if they had more focus on it, I think they could have made it into a real success. It'll be interesting to see five years from now when the truth comes out, why it was really killed, what the reality was. I suspect it had to do with privacy laws that they were gathering or needing to gather a whole lot of information about job seekers that just doesn't play well with laws like GDPR.Max: Yeah.Steven: And, better fo...

Max: Hello. Welcome back to the Recruitment Hackers Podcast. I'm your host, Max Armbruster. And, today I'm delighted to welcome Peter Weddle, who is the CEO for the Association for Talent Acquisition Solution, also known as TAtech, which you can find on TAtech.org. Peter has been leading this association which gathers vendors, practitioners, and who is a real futurist as well. He has written some books on what the future holds for humanity and how to prepare our future generations for the impending rise of the machines. So, I'm excited to talk to him about some of the trends that are shaping this year and perhaps how to prepare not for the next year, but for our next generation of recruiter, how our recruiters are gonna look like, and what they’re gonna do 20 years from now? We'll have a bit of a discussion on that. Peter, thank you so much for joining.Peter: It's great to be here, Max. Thanks for having me.Max: It's a pleasure. And, always love your newsletter. I love your content. So, maybe we'll start with that. What is TAtech? And, how can people get plugged in?Peter: TAtech is the trade association for the global talent technology industry. So, that means that our members span the spectrum from job boards and aggregators and job distribution companies to conversational AI solutions, programmatic ad buying platforms, recruitment advertising agencies, marketing companies. Basically, any company that uses technology to design, develop and deliver a talent acquisition product or service for employers.Max: Okay! So, there's a lot to unfold there. But we're talking about basically the cutting edge of talent acquisition. And, I… you're based in Chicago right?Peter: Actually, we're based in Stamford, Connecticut.Max: In Connecticut. All right. Great. And the…but with a membership that is global. But, I think a lot of the investment is coming out of the U.S. right? That's really the hub of the TAtech industry.Peter: Well, we do a number of things as a trade association but we're probably best known for our conferences. We certainly do one in called TAtech North America, but we also do one in Europe called TAtech Europe. And, that's for the whole EMEA region. And, I think it's safe to say that, yeah, there's a lot of investment, probably more money flowing into talent acquisition technologies and products than H.R. products largely. But, that's not only true in the U.S. now, it's increasingly true across Europe, particularly in the U.K. There's a lot of really fascinating developments of new companies springing up in Europe and in U.K.Max: Yeah! Absolutely. I think actually that when it comes to recruitment, recruitment has more domestic localized elements. And so, you know, a lot of the leaders have come from Europe or from different parts of the world and then from India, and then they eventually make it to the U.S., which is the biggest market. So, it's quite an international community, I would say. But the capital certainly seems to be coming out of the U.S. in majority.Peter: Well, we're very fortunate that we, as you mentioned earlier, we do have a global member base. So, we have the advantage of being able to look at not only new developments, but also where the current trendsetters in the industry are going into the future. And, we can look across all of those trends globally because, you know, the fact of the matter is that increasingly we have a global workforce. So, companies may be based in the U.S., but they're hiring all over the world and vice versa. Companies in India are hiring in North America and so forth. So I think it's important to recognize that, you know, geography is still important, but geographical barriers are not.Max: They're coming down. Yeah. And, increasingly now there are some behaviors that are… I mean, whether you're in India or in the US or in France, you are witnessing how fast the world is moving,how fast things are becoming, the consumerization of just about everything. And so, that's going to affect, of course, the recruitment because the way consumers behave globally is pushing recruitment in the same direction, you know, in all corners of the world. So, yeah, it's a good fine balance between these local and global trends. But before we talk about the future and those…or about those trends, Peter, how did you…how does someone end up being the CEO of the TAtech? How did you end up in recruitment to begin with in talent acquisition?Peter: Well, I was a partner in the Hay Group, so I… my roots are in the H.R. field. But, I got the entrepreneurial bug and bought a company called Job Bank USA in the early 90’s. This was pre-internet but we were arguably one of the largest companies to use computers to match people in jobs. And, about five years later, I sold that firm and fell into a gig writing a bi-weekly column for the Wall Street Journal about this new thing called the Internet and in particular the employment space online. And, I bought that basically until Murdoch bought or I did that until Murdoch bought Dow Jones. So, I got to go over the shoulders, meet and interact with all of the early players in online talent acquisition. And, by 2007, it just seemed to me that the industry had matured to the point where it needed a trade association and an organization to help set standards, to help identify best practices, to make sure that customers, employers were getting what they paid for those kinds of things. So, we launched TAtech in 2007, and the first thing we did was create a code of ethics because we believe, you know, that technology needs to serve the individuals that are using it, not the other way around. So, we really focused on that first. Since then, we've developed a whole range of products to help our members do something that is very simple, make more money at the bottom line.Max: I admit to you and to our audience, I have not read the code of ethics yet but I'm going to do that as soon as our conversation is over. And, I am on board because I have read all of Asimov's work and I know that we have to set the rules early in the game before the machines take over. So, I am on board and yeah, it's amazing how far we've gone in those 20 years where…Well, 15 years you've been running the association, and to think where we were in 2007, right? Where it was basically the first SaaS companies like Taleo going IPO and success factors and early days of ATS. Do you…are you as excited today as you were back then about where this industry is going after all these years?Peter: I think it's fair to say I'm more excited. You know, Kurzweil, the head of engineering at Google, has said that we will see 10,000 years of progress in the next 100 years because the pace of technology, technological invention, and innovation is accelerating. And I think, you know, it's hard to wake up on any given day, walk into the office and not find something new. So, our challenge as a species is to learn how to leverage the advantages of this technology, this development, and also preserve some space for our species so that we, you know, lead fulfilling lives.  Max: Mm hmm. Then, there are some concerns with the pace of technology being such that people can't keep up, that the jobs that are more menial and that do not require, you know, too much thinking. The non-thinking jobs are gonna disappear and be replaced by mechanical robots and yeah, I mean, there's perhaps a concern about whether there'll be job...

00:00:01.860Max: Hello, and welcome back to the Recruitment Hackers Podcast. I’m your host, Max Ambruster and on today's show, I'm delighted to welcome Tim Freestone, who is the founder of Alooba, a tech startup based in…well Tim is based in Australia, but I gathered your team is spread out all over the world, which is specialized in helping companies, hire data scientists, engineers, architects and analysts, and so all the people that deal with data. And if you live in the same world that I do, that share of the employment workforce is always growing, and every company needs them. So, I'll be asking Tim about how to attract and how to interview this talent, and welcome to the show Tim. 00:00:56.220Tim: Thanks for having me, Max. It's great to be here from a very sunny afternoon in Sydney. 00:01:01.890Max: Great! Great to be connected. So Tim, tell us a little bit about yourself to begin with. How does…how did you end up in the…or maybe we'll start with your company, Alooba. Did I describe it okay? Is it an attraction methodology? It's more of a screening methodology or tool, right? 00:01:26.820Tim: Yeah! So we basically assess people skills in analytics data science and two main use cases for that. One is definitely that hiring use case which you mentioned and so companies would use our product typically either as a very short initial screening quiz that they would send to every applicant who applies for one of their data roles. And there'll be a customized assessment on our platform assessing things like ,I don't know, statistics machine learning visualizations, really depends on the role. And that's kind of one half of the company. The other half is really around assessing people skills internally within a business trying to find the strengths and weaknesses. And that's most often being used in conjunction with the data literacy strategy. So it's becoming bigger and bigger these days that you know, you might be a data scientist and have really advanced skills, but what about the 99% of the company, who aren't data scientist? What kind of data skills do they need? And so a lot of businesses realize that everyone needs some basic data literacy. And so we often get involved at the starting points of putting in place that learning and development plan. We really come in as that measurement tool to understand okay what's our current benchmark, and then keep measuring through time to see hopefully that they've had some improvement in their data literacy. 00:02:44.100Max: Hmm! Yeah, makes sense. I was advised for my business to put a portion of our account management team on things like learning how to use SQL and I'm getting training like that, so I guess I've put it out to my employees as a good recommendation but I haven't enforced it, but you know in bigger companies you're seeing data literacy being enforced at the corporate level and pushed across departments. Is that an example? Like an SQL training?00:03:18.660Tim: I'd say SQL would probably fit into the relatively advanced part of data literacy. So they'd be things that are even more basic or simple than that would normally form part of that program. It could be things like, hey, you know what metrics should I be looking at to answer these types of problems. Understanding basic ideas around like sample size. So, you know if you're reading a report and you see that I don't know the number of bookings in England went from… went up by 50% but you know, to look at that and actually they went from two to three so that doesn't really mean much if the book has gone from two to three right? And just having that kind of understanding of the basics of data, really. 00:03:58.800Max: Yeah! I suppose there is such a wide gap between, you know, the experts and the beginners that you gotta lift people so that they don't say anything stupid to begin with, like use two decimal points on a percentage when your basic…like you said on a sample size of two or three, stuff like that. Great! Well, how did you end up, you know, launching Alooba. I suppose this is a problem that you…it sounds like this is something personal, apparently, that you want to do for yourself. 00:04:34.950Tim: It definitely is a selective confluence of the last 10 years of my life, really is this business. So, the last role I was in was at a tech company, I was leading an analytics team. And so, I noticed two big themes, while I was at this business, so one was anytime I went to hire any kind of data professional, so, data analysts, data engineers, data scientists, I found it personally a massive pain in the ass trying to hire. So, the process was you know you put up a job ad on LinkedIn or in Australia. We have seek like the big job platforms. You get all these applications through and you basically get a CV. And then from that CV trying to pick through quickly and figure out, who are the best candidates to interview.What I found consistently was that it was very hard to predict, based on a CV alone, who the best candidate was to speak to. So, that meant that I have to do a lot of interviews to hire one person. I'd often get five minutes into an interview and realize the candidate who said they had X, Y said advanced skills, obviously didn't have those. And so, I really wanted a more efficient, simple, a more objective way to screen candidates that was one origin. And the other piece was looking around at my colleagues and realizing that in a company of 150 people, we had maybe I think six or seven data professionals. But then, there are at least another 30 or 40 people, all the product managers, all the online marketers, the senior managers of the business where I looked, what they actually did day to day, it was basic analytics, even if they didn't think of themselves as analysts. And it was very clear to me that this data literacy thing was becoming more and more important. 00:06:10.230Max: Yeah, yeah! So, it's like…it should be like a mandatory step in the journey for a good portion of the job be…well, can you handle data? Do you know how to extract it? How to use it? How to interpret it? That makes sense and the other point you made, which is you know the resumes are lying, right? That if you look at a hot space like the one you're in where it…we know that salaries are inflated and that there is not enough talents, and so it's going to potentially attract people who are trying to find a shortcut to a better life, you know and good. But I will guess there are some resumes that are kind of like packed with keywords that don't belong there. 00:06:54.600Tim: Yeah! There's definitely some keyword stuffing. There's some inflation there's also just… you know, we're not the best judges of ourselves, and a really interesting data point that we collect directly on Alooba  to kind of master this is that, before a candidate starts a test, they rate themselves on a scale of one to ten for each skill that we are about to assess them in, and then we compared their self-rating to their actual performance to come up with what we call the self-awareness index, and to cut a long story ...

Max:Hello, and welcome back to the Recruitment Hackers Podcast. I'm your host Max Ambruster and today I'm delighted to welcome on the show, Cynthia Owyoung, who is the author of a new book “All are welcome - how to build a real workplace culture of inclusion that delivers results.” And we're going to be speaking about, well, the results, mainly, and how talent acquisition can drive that. And how the field has changed over the last 20 years. Because Cindy has been in the space for a long time and has seen the world change. So, Cindy, welcome to the show.Cynthia:Thank you so much, Max, for having me. I'm excited to have the conversation with you.Max:Yeah, thanks for coming. And congrats on the new book. Before we get into the book and the lessons, could you share with me and with my audience, our audience, your curriculum and how you ended up in the beautiful world of inclusion?Cynthia:It's a great question, I did not have a very straight path to it, it was a little bit roundabout and curvy. I started my career actually in marketing, I worked for ad agencies doing consumer research and strategic branding. But after a decade of that, I decided it wasn't that fulfilling. And I wanted to do something that would feed my soul a little bit more than just selling products to people, that sometimes they didn't actually need. So, I went to grad school intending to start my own nonprofit, because I have a brother who is developmentally disabled. And, you know, being Asian, and having a disability in the Asian community, culturally, that can be very taboo. And so, you know, my brother being an adult, he had aged out of a lot of services that are given to children under the age of 18. And I…still on my life plan, I'm still going to do a nonprofit that supports adults in the Asian community with developmental disability.But I decided to put it off because I met some folks who did diversity and inclusion work inside companies. And once I heard what they did, which was you know, I mean, they work to create access and inclusion for everyone and equal opportunities. I thought to myself, well, that's what I want to do, right? That's something where I can make a positive difference in the world, employ people like my brother, and really open doors, instead of being the one that knocks on them all the time. So, I made the switch. I got my first job in diversity management at a company called Intuit, which does financial tax software, and have been lucky enough since then, for almost 20 years now to work in several types of tech-companies, media, global, startup, gone into financial services. And now, written the book.Max:Yeah. And because we haven't dropped all the names after into it, but I will mention them, Cindy worked at Yahoo, GitHub, Charles Schwab. And most recently Ability Path and in Robin Hood, so quite a resume. And many beautiful companies, I think that have had, you know, leaders in their field. Of course, not everybody can afford to have a Head of Diversity and inclusion, can have an officer like small company like myself, 50 employees, I think, I have to be the Head of Diversity myself. So, yeah, is there a way for companies that are on the smaller range, side of the range to, to think about, okay, what do I do about diversity and inclusion? And who should be in charge? Should somebody be in charge? And I what point do I hire? Can I afford to hire someone?Cynthia:Really good question. So yes, absolutely. And you know, it's funny that you mentioned that you should be the Head of Diversity and Inclusion at your company, because yes, you should. And you actually find a lot more leaders these days are taking up that mantle from…in a very official status, right? The CEO of Nielsen, which is a marketing measurement company, here in the US, that I think operates globally as well. Their CEO announced a few years ago that he was the chief diversity officer for the company. And that's definitely a growing trend, others CEOs have made very similar kinds of statements. And it's important because it's important to have the senior most leaders of any company, whether you're small, 15 people or 100,000 people, really committed to supporting diversity and inclusion, because your employees take their signal from that, right? If they hear that you care about the space, then they're going to be more accountable to supporting the space.And you know, any company like you don't actually have to have a dedicated person, you don't have to necessarily have a huge budget for this, like, there's lots of low cost ways to incorporate this into your company, whether that is taking advantage of free training and online seminars that are out there, or even just like buying things like my book, right, and having a book club to have a conversation about different concepts around diversity, equity and inclusion, you know, thinking about who you're hiring, and where you're hiring from. Any hiring manager has decision making power over that, right? And I can really think about how to incorporate that diverse lens into how they're sourcing for candidates and how they're considering competencies in the space and who they want, to what perspective they want to add to their team. So, all of these ways are ways in which the, you know, no cost, no real like, you know, effort to do other than being intentional about it.Max:Great, well, let's get into recruitment since that's our focus on the show. And so the intention of you set on sourcing, as well as on the selection front, you know, being more opening the door to other groups. The sourcing question is difficult, it's a little technical, because on one hand, you could say, well, I'm going to open the door by basically communicating jobs to as many people as possible using popular channels like social media to just get the word out, and so that we're not really restricted to word of mouth referral networks. Another approach would be intentionally to say, okay, I'm going to go look for people who are hearing impaired and neurodivergent and, you know, work at home moms, and all kinds of categories, and that, then that becomes like, a very difficult endeavor, because you don't necessarily find these pockets. I don't know, I perhaps…Pardon my ignorance, but I don't know if there was even such marketplaces available to recruiters where they can go and pick by category by category if they wanted to do so.Cynthia:Not quite like that. But there are definitely ways to, I think you can actually do both, right. I think it's important to like get the word out to as wide an audience as possible, right, so that you can find the best talent from the available pool, right? I mean, that's everyone's goal, right? They want to hire the best person, the most qualified person for their jobs. The question is always like, have you actually put out a wide enough net to capture the interest of the most qualified best person for your job? And do you define, you know, an effective sourcing process, as you know, looking for diversity within that? I do, I think most companies should, right. And what you can do in terms of like, sourcing, specifically for people of very, you know, specific and different backgrounds, is you can look for organizations that produce pipeline around that.There's lots of technology platforms these days that actually provide matching algorithms for people from diverse backgrounds to different jobs. Some of them are targeted by gender, some of them are targeted by race, others are targeted by disability, and others for you...