Your hiring process should not just start with stacking up resumes. If you want the right fit for the job and for your company, you need to be thorough. Joining Bob Roark today are Steve Urban and Scott Kegerreis, co-founders of Riderflex, a generalist boutique recruiting firm servicing all industries, all functions, nationwide, C-level to associates. The two recruitment experts share how you can optimize your recruitment process. It’s not just about credentials on paper but also the character and personality. It all comes down to a human element. Learn more about their process and how they’ve helped build successful companies through their work by tuning in.

---

Optimizing Your Hiring Process With Steve Urban and Scott Kegerreis

The big questions are, “How do business owners like us spend our own money, time and effort? How do we grow our business and jump the line that lets us accelerate the delivery of our products and services in our community while being smart about our growth, profits, and culture, and still creating lasting value in our business?” Those are the questions in this show. We will share some of those answers. Our guests are Steve Urban, CEO and Cofounder, and Scott Kegerreis, CRO and Cofounder of Riderflex, a global recruiting and consulting firm. Welcome to the show.

---

Thank you so much for being on the show. It has been a long time. The last time we talked was in February of 2018 on one of the episodes of the show. You have been hitting it out of the park. You have amazing five-star reviews counting over 200. What is it that you offer to your customers? What is it that you do?

For the readers, I'm glad to be back on the show. We are a recruiting firm and what we're here to talk about is our recruiting business. If it wasn't for you, I don't think Riderflex Podcast that we would do would not exist if it wasn’t for you because you gave us that suggestion way back a long time ago. I always think to myself, “The podcast we have would not exist without Bob.”

Thank you for the mentoring and advice you gave us way back then. You have a wonderful show and all the guests that you have had on. I try to mimic that a little bit and follow your lead, especially early on when I was first getting started. Thank you for the advice and the relationship that we have. With Bob Roark is appreciated.

For the readers, Riderflex is a generalist boutique recruiting firm for all industries and functions nationwide from C-level to associates. We are having great success building the company. Scott and I started it in late 2016. We both came from executive backgrounds. I was an operations guy and Scott was a sales guy. We had met each other working at a horticulture outfit. We bonded and had a lot of similarities.

We enjoyed being around each other so we stayed in touch. I called him and said, “I want to turn Riderflex into a recruiting firm.” He's like, “There are 20,000 recruiters. Why do we want to do that?” I said, “Most of them suck. We can do a lot better.” I’ve got some ideas on how to do it the right way because I had dealt with and hired recruiters, and recruiters had worked for me because I had run a couple of $40 million companies as a CEO. I had a lot of experience in hiring, interviewing and dealing with recruiters. I knew it could be done better.

At Buffalo Wild Wings, after the 3rd or 4th beer, I finally scratched out on a napkin what I thought we should do. I was trying to convince Scott to come to help me do it because I was an ops guy but Scott was sales. I knew that he could sell it and I could execute it. That's how it got started but I will let Scott give a better overview of who we are and what our secret sauce is as a search firm.

For us, it all comes down to why did we start it. We were executives leading companies and it came down to our experiences. When he says that, “Most of them suck,” the part that we found, where there was a lack of value was the attention to our company, culture, our needs, and what we are needing. It felt and still feels like with all the new technology and different algorithms that you can run that people are now a commodity. It feels like a lot of the recruiting has turned people into a commodity and we are just trading paper. It is a job description for racing resumes.

Most recruiting firms are quickly trying to grab some resumes and match that to the job descriptions in an effort to get paid and make employment matches. We started the company Riderflex because we felt like the industry was broken and there was a better way. What we are trying to do is put an emphasis and focus back on the company and the culture. When we say culture, we are talking about how do companies work? What's their headcount? What's their revenue growth? What is the leadership style? Who are the hiring managers? How do all these people and pieces come together and function as an organization?

The best algorithms out there can very easily go scrape the internet, pull down 30 to 40 profiles from individuals, match keywords and all those people tactically can do the job but the heart and the meat of it come down to being thorough in interviewing and selecting folks that have the personality, character, attributes and most importantly the experiences to fit well with how an organization operates and works.

[bctt tweet="With all the new technology that’s out there and all the different algorithms that you can run, it feels like a lot of the recruiting has turned people into a commodity." via="no"]

Of all these people that might match on paper, some are going to be well-suited for Fortune 500 and big organizations, “Let me come in and do my thing, retreat to my home and do that over and over again.” They are comfortable in that and that's great. There's a place for everybody that has that particular profile. There are other people that enjoy risk, the fast pace of a startup, scaling, and wearing many hats. In some cases, their compensation is geared towards some equity in the organization and they can forgo some of that upfront compensation.

Our whole purpose and process are designed to dig in with the organization at the beginning and do a very good thorough discovery call where we get to talk with as many people as possible that are involved with the hiring process. It could be an owner, founders, hiring managers or any individual that's responsible for hiring and working with the candidates that are going to be coming through.

We are doing that deep dive and discovery call, having our recruiters, and very talented team go out there and do an exhaustive and thorough search to not only find individuals who can do the job. These people have to check the boxes, come in and be able to tactically perform on the role itself but also get deep with these candidates.

We do that through video interviews and Steve has conducted most of those at the very beginning. We have another executive-level individual, Becky Roach, on our team who also conducts these video interviews. These are individuals, Steve and Becky, that have built hundreds of teams, hired thousands of people, and know how to have a conversation with an individual to understand them, learn about who they are, those experiences, characters and attributes. They help the recruiter decide if this individual is going to work well within the organization.

If somebody gets to a video interview, they tactically can do the job. They are a good fit. They will be able to come in and execute. The video interview is designed to talk to the candidate or the individual and make sure they are going to work well with Bob or whoever the owner of the organization is. It has been a very good process for us. Since we started in 2016, we have had 2,000 placements and created a database of almost 200,000 potential candidates for our team to look through along with new people that we can pull in.

It has created a 90%-plus and many times it hovers around 96% retention rate for that manager level and up individuals. It has contributed well to our clients in building strong and long-lasting teams to the point where once we are able to work with a particular company and hiring managers. They trust us and our team to do it for them again when they need more help. It's an all-out effort to make sure that we are moving past the algorithm and ensuring that we are bringing the best-quality individual and talent to an organization to fit how they work. Steve, what else is in there?

You covered that pretty well for the readers. Let's say you are a startup to a midsize company, you are overwhelmed, scaling up, and need to hire five people. You don't have time, an in-house HR person or recruiter. If you do, they are overwhelmed and they don't have time to find people. I would give Riderflex a call. We are happy to help you.

Our prices are generally 25% lower than most of the competition because we have very low overhead and no office. Scott and I don't pay ourselves big salaries so our prices are