Beyond the Guest: Getting To Know Your Hosts

[00:00:00] Hello, social media followers, LinkedIn, Facebook, and everyone tuning into our show. Welcome to Beyond the Offer Podcast. I’m your host, Rosanna Snediker, joined by my co-host and friend Bill Gates. Thanks for tuning in as we tackle the latest trends and challenges in the talent acquisition and human resources space. So today, as you can see, we do not have a guest, it’s a little bit of a different episode. We’re going to just try something new here. Bill and I are gonna do a solo episode so our listeners can get to know us a little bit better. So let’s jump into this. Why don’t we do it? Let’s do it. Okay. So first off, we’re just gonna do just quick intros about ourselves so that folks can know a little bit more about our backgrounds.

[00:00:36] You wanna kick us off? I will. I will. Yeah. So Bill Gates, some of you know me as Will, the Bill Gates thing is a bit of a branding exercise that Matt Masucci, our founder had me change my name back in what was that, 2011, I believe or so. But, you know, everyone knows the real Bill Gates, but I’m the recruiting Bill Gates and I have, I’ve been around the recruiting world for about 16, 17 [00:01:00] years.

[00:01:00] Started off at Tech Systems, doing the tech recruiting side of the equation, and been at Hirewell pretty much ever since 2011. For the most part, doing, you know, human resources and finance and accounting, specific recruiting, within Hirewell. That’s on a career perspective standpoint, on a family side of the house,

[00:01:17] I’ve got three kids. I’m a girl dad, ages are six and I have twin girls who are three. And, grew up in Kansas City and, moved to Chicago right after college. So that’s about me in a bit of a nutshell. I love it. Okay, well I’ll jump in. So I have, been in recruiting similar about 16, 17 years, right outta college.

[00:01:38] I grew up in Southern Illinois and moved to Chicago for a recruiting job, very similar to, I’m gonna call you Will in this one ’cause I do call you that. I worked at Tech Systems doing it, recruiting for about seven years and then have been at Hirewell now for just celebrated 10 years. And similar to Will, I’m all focused within HR, finance, and accounting.

[00:01:59] And then [00:02:00] family-wise, I actually am a girl mom. I just had my first baby little girl. She is eight months old. So learning a ton every day and definitely relying on Will and his wife Abby, for, you know, help and advice on how to raise children. Well yeah, that’s awesome. Well, I know you know the answer to this question, but will you tell our listeners how we got to know each other?

[00:02:21] What is it 16, 17 years ago or so? Yeah. What, 2000, was it 10 or 11? What year did you graduate? 2010. 2010. So like Will, and I said we both started at Tech Systems. I had been there I guess about two years. And the way they had it structured, everyone was like pretty much skillset aligned from a recruiting side.

[00:02:39] So I had always recruited QA, which I’m not even sure if that’s something people necessarily fully focus on, we’re dating ourselves. And when Will joined, he joined the QA pod. So I helped train him, get him up to speed for that first What? You worked there only a year, which is crazy. Yeah, it was about a [00:03:00] year.

[00:03:00] Yeah. Yeah. But we patted the phones together with our pod. I mean, if you wanna start at like a agency and learn how to recruit, you got to join one of those big ones ’cause you work what, 7:30 to 6 every day. Sometimes work on the weekends. But they give you a good foundation. They definitely give you a lot of the tools you need to become a really solid recruiter from that standpoint.

[00:03:21] And, you know, I think we developed having a lot of relationships from, folks that were at tech systems and still have them today. Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, I mean, Will and I stayed in touch. We became close friends. His girlfriend at the time, now wife Abby is one of my good friends. We have, you know, a huge network of friends through tech systems and just through meeting people.

[00:03:38] So even after he left to come to Hirewell or at that time, I think you all were Human Capital Management solutions. Yes. Yep, that’s right. Yeah, we stayed in touch about recruiting and then in 2015, so yeah, 10 years ago, I was just having one of those days where I’m like, I just need to take a mental break. Well, I think there were like three [00:04:00] or four different opportunities, to potentially, you know, poach you kind of coming out of there.

[00:04:04] But, I don’t think you bid on the first maybe three, but I think the fourth time was, you know, I just caught you at the right day. And anyway, long story short is, we ended up bringing you over to Hirewell. Yeah, now it’s, yeah, I think we had lunch and then I started like two weeks later, so it happened quickly.

[00:04:19] But you’re right, we had been talking about it for years. And it’s been so great. I mean, you and I have worked together now here a decade, and I think it’s the best part is just like having someone that you know super well that you can like, bounce ideas off of, like we both have been doing this quite a while now, but I still feel like I learned a ton from you and just having someone that you trust and that you can run client questions by, internal questions by, it’s been awesome for my career.

[00:04:42] So thanks for bringing me over 10 years ago. It’s just a big change, you know? It was for me too, and I mean, I was only in tech recruiting for a year, but did have a good foundation. But going from a company that owns the Baltimore Ravens to a company of 10, or I don’t remember, what was it, about 25, maybe when I started [00:05:00] 20 or 25?

[00:05:00] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when I joined it was around 10. So we were really small and been around for, I don’t know, 10, maybe 10 years or so. But something that lacked, the structure that a place like Tech Systems did and then moving from tech recruiting to human resources recruiting was a bit of a shift, I think, for both of us when we made that transition.

[00:05:19] But, all for the better, you know, haven’t necessarily looked back. No, I think in the moment it was like, do I wanna do this? And now I’m like, thank goodness we did.

[00:05:28] So as we both said, we’ve been in recruiting a long time. What would you say is like the thing that you enjoy most about recruiting? What’s kept you on it for this long? You know, I’d say, I mean, this is probably a bit of a canned answer, but I mean, I would say that the relationships that you develop internally and externally, getting to know people and, you know, even though a lot of people would call us like head hunters or recruiters or whatever, I think it’s, once you do this for a while, I think most people would agree that we’re more like career consultants and getting to [00:06:00] know

[00:06:01] what clients are looking for and better understanding what they’re missing, if it’s a new role, if it’s a replacement for a person. And then, you know, talking to specific candidates about their careers and what is it that they’re missing in their current job and where do they want to be in five to 10 years.

[00:06:16] And, you know, being so specialized in finance and accounting and HR recruiting, you get to know what those career paths are. You know, whether some candidates are one to two years right out of school or they’re planning and, they are CFOs or CHROs, you know, it’s different conversations and different career paths of where they kind of want to be.

[00:06:37] But I love the ability to be able to navigate those conversations and keep those relationships that, have really existed for the past 15 to 16 years. What about yourself? What do you like most about recruiting? Yeah, I think similar. I mean, definitely the relationships.

[00:06:51] And one thing I’ve always loved about this is specific to the agency side, is just like we get to learn about so many different companies in so many different industries. That’s a good point. Yeah. Yeah. And [00:07:00] I think like right outta college, I didn’t really realize it, but pretty quickly I was like, I just know a lot about,

[00:07:05] not at a high level, but you know a lot about businesses and what companies do. And as you get older and you have more of your conversations focused around what’s your career, what do you do, where do you work, when you meet new people, nine times outta 10, I’m like, I know that company. I know what you do.

[00:07:19] And I just feel like you don’t realize how much you actually learn about other industries whenever you’re doing agency recruiting. And it keeps it interesting and fun. That’s so true. Yeah. You just, you realize how many companies out there you didn’t even realize existed, like, you know? Yeah. Thinking of a company like Boeing, for example, all of the suppliers that go into the nuts and bolts that, you know, just an actual airplane itself and the components that would go into just a hose in your backyard and the components that go into that.

[00:07:47] It’s not just one. There’s some companies out there that the one job is to make the nozzle on the end of the actual hose. Right. And I you wouldn’t know that necessarily unless you were in that sector or space or in [00:08:00] recruiting. Right. Yeah.

[00:08:01] And then I think also just like being in charge of your career on the agency side, like your direct results. It’s your paycheck and you get to kind of be, you know, work as hard as you want and the sky’s the limit, which is why I’ve always stayed on the agency side. Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. Well, shifting gears a little bit, I mean, in terms of like trends, here’s another question one of our listeners asked, but what recruiting trends have you seen over just kind of the past five years?

[00:08:30] I mean, it’s been such a crazy market. Five years feels like 10 years at this point. But I think like post pandemic, you’ve just seen, and we’ve talked a lot about this on a lot of our guests. I mean, obviously the flexibility, the remote work, I mean, doing this on Zoom, like this is something we would’ve never thought possible six years ago. For sure.

[00:08:47] If you followed any of our content at Hirewell, we had a little studio that we would go sit in and talk. So just the way we work is so different. And recruiting can be done anywhere. So that’s been a big change. The industries [00:09:00] that have like grown and that have stayed, I guess, pretty steady the past five years have been interesting because tech’s always been, you know, especially in Chicago, San Francisco, these markets where you have like startup communities, it’s always been a growing area, but we’ve really kind of seen that

[00:09:15] slow down and like some of the more steady industries are where consistent hiring’s coming from, whether that’s manufacturing, industrial, you know, large financial services companies. Gosh, what else trend-wise have you seen? I’m just trying to think of what we’ve talked about on the episodes. You know, for like the last five years,

[00:09:32] I think it’s, I mean, over the last three, I think it’s been pretty steady, Eddie. Similar companies that are hiring, healthcare, manufacturing, you know, a few here and there, financial services. But you know, I think SaaS definitely was, the SaaS is obviously still hiring, I think, but it’s not, it doesn’t seem like it’s as hot of an industry, from my perspective. But what was interesting is coming out of COVID, you know, you go from the rollercoaster ride we experienced from those, from [00:10:00] 2019 to, where I think the market was very hot, to kind of a standstill pause in 2020 where, you know, no one was necessarily hiring outside of like a few niche industries to the

[00:10:12] I mean the 2021 year, which was one of the craziest, you know, years I think we’ve ever had in all of my recruiting years. Probably similar to 2010 coming out of the recession back then. And then 22, and I would say 22 is probably comparable to 21, but 23, 24, and I think this year have all been kind of pretty steady in regard to specifically to hiring trends and the similar industries hiring.

[00:10:38] Would you agree? Yeah, I would. And I think we’re now kind of where things have just kind of evened out. I mean, going back to what you said, like the 2010, it’s almost like 2020 was 2008, like when I started recruiting in 08, everything was booming and then the housing market, you know, completely crashed.

[00:10:53] And end of 2009, early 2010, there was nothing to work on. It’s like that’s what we were doing in 2020. We would [00:11:00] meet as a team here, much smaller team than what we have now, and we had maybe one or two positions that we were all just working on and trying to do business development. So it all goes in waves.

[00:11:10] A question that I feel like I get a lot is about like the job reports that we see out there. There’s obviously the governmental, job report that factors in, you know, the public and also the governmental sector. The ADP report that essentially gives more of your private sector of just obviously their platform and what the comp increases are and how many new jobs have obviously been out there.

[00:11:31] But a question I feel like that is asked a lot is like, how is that reflective on what we see? And I feel like it’s always six to eight months behind, because it’s not necessarily

[00:11:41] some of it’s live data, but I know the governmental survey, forget what it’s called at the moment, but usually relies much more on like surveys and things like that, whereas the

[00:11:52] ADP is a bit more immediate, but still I think it’s, you know, when there’s a recession in or a loss in jobs, I feel like we’ve usually [00:12:00] experienced it’s five, six months ahead of, or before? Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Well, and I think that’s why it’s so crucial for like clients to talk to us and candidates to talk to us because we have like real time data.

[00:12:09] You know, we’re talking to companies, we know who’s hiring, we know who’s not. But yeah, I agree. A lot of those reports are just a little bit delayed, so that’s why sometimes what we’re seeing and what the media is posting and what people are seeing on the news doesn’t always a hundred percent align. For sure.

[00:12:25] Sure. Speaking of news, so this week the Fed, you know, they’re talking about new rate cuts, it’s happened before. How do you think that’ll impact the job market and just hiring in general? I think it’ll help. Yeah. I mean, I can’t pretend to be an economist or anything like that. But I mean, I think it, it’s obviously probably a little more, impactful for the housing market than it is I think the job market.

[00:12:47] But it definitely does impact it. I think, I mean, usually the lower the rates, typically the more hiring companies have from a financial perspective to invest in growth and hiring new people and, things like that. So I think it’s only going [00:13:00] to really help, from that standpoint. You know, I don’t think necessarily a half a point will be a drastic, necessarily change, but, I do think that we should see companies over the next, you know, 3, 4, 5 months, and to finish Q4, to hire a lot more.

[00:13:15] But it’ll be interesting to see. Yeah, I agree. And it doesn’t, I mean, it gets people talking about the job market more too, and it’s always, okay, how is this going to impact? And maybe it’ll be more on like the contract side and interim where, you know, companies can bring people in the short term.

[00:13:29] But yeah, it typically does result in more money being spent on hiring, so, for sure. Well, and on that note too, I mean, I know private equity is something a lot of the times we talk about with, guests that we have on our show, but have you seen an increase in private equity backed organizations, and just kind of their, what’s kind of their involvement within recruiting

[00:13:48] within the companies that they, they own? Yeah. I mean, I think across Hirewell, that’s been an area that we’ve seen hiring grow probably the past two to three years now at this point. It’s interesting ’cause it feels like [00:14:00] every PE firm does it a little different. You know, some are way involved in hiring, some are completely hands off.

[00:14:06] Yeah. Even talking to TA, folks that either work at private equity backed companies or are working at the PE firm, kind of overseeing all the hiring across the portfolios. You know, some of them meet quarterly to talk about what the other organizations are doing. Some, you know, they don’t talk at all to their peers that are essentially in their role for another company.

[00:14:24] So I think it depends PE firm to PE firm, but it definitely feels like a lot of them do wanna be involved, especially on the more higher level hiring, you know, more senior level positions. Yeah. What I wonder is like how much is that really a trend that we’re just seeing as a company individually? Because we’ve definitely, I mean, I don’t know necessarily the percentage of clients that are PE backed, but I would say maybe 40, 50% of them would be my, yeah

[00:14:50] rough estimate. Especially in the finance and, accounting and HR recruiting world. But I wonder is that just because our relationships have been more PE [00:15:00] backed or are there just more PE backed companies as a whole that are hiring out there now? From that standpoint. So it’s hard to completely assess it.

[00:15:08] I know I’ve talked to other recruiters that are ad agencies as well. And some of them are only focused on private equity backed organizations and they, it seems to be up, but, I don’t know. I always definitely wonder that question. And, but you’re right. In terms of the hiring aspect and how PE companies are involved, it really does depend on their, some are super involved and,

[00:15:29] helping their port cos some are very hands off, they don’t do anything right. Yeah. And also it depends on their strategy. Is it kind of a three year, three to five year flip of a, an organization depending on their fund or is it a more of a long-term hold private equity firm where, you know, it’s more of a partnership and they’re in it for the long haul and they do more of the profit sharing backed, PE strategy.

[00:15:50] So, that’s always kind of an interesting thing and what they specialize in right? Is it more small space PE? Is it more manufacturing company? Yeah, totally. Yeah. I will [00:16:00] say though, I mean if you’re listening and you’re on the job market, or if you just are looking at your background, if you have experience working for PE organizations, it’s only a benefit at this point.

[00:16:08] You know, companies like seeing that I was talking about a CFO role earlier this week, you know, and they’re looking for someone that has specifically worked at a PE backed organization. So yeah, used to, do you remember? It used to be a bit more of like a scare attack. I think people were scared of being involved in private equity.

[00:16:23] Now it’s becoming much more of a selling point. Yeah, people want it. I talk to candidates that are like, that’s the direction I want to take my career. So, yeah. Yeah. I mean there’s definitely a risk reward joining a place like that, but it depends on kind of their strategy, involvement, et cetera.

[00:16:39] Yeah, well, talking about just different types of hiring, I mean RPO hiring, project based something Hirewell does, something we talk about a lot. When do you think it makes most sense for companies to use an outsourced hiring model, whether that’s, you know, a short-term solution, a long-term solution?

[00:16:56] Part-time, full-time versus building an internal team? I [00:17:00] think it all depends on the hiring that they forecast of hiring, really. Right. I mean, if you look at over the course of the next year, you know, are you planning on this? Let’s say you have a recruiting team of one at a smaller company and you get a increase of 40 jobs and you anticipate that being consistently the case over the next two, three years.

[00:17:21] Probably an internal solution and hiring internal recruiters makes more sense. Now is this just a spike for six months? Then I think it’s a bit more of a an RPO solution, to where you’ll probably save money from a cost perspective standpoint, because what do you do with those recruiters if those 40 jobs go down to five?

[00:17:42] Right. You know, you could technically integrate them more to on an HR perspective, but will they be interested in doing that, and will they be valuable to the organization there? So those are all the things that I would essentially look at as questions when you’re considering using an RPO or putting it internally.

[00:17:57] But what are your thoughts? Yeah, [00:18:00] I think the same, like, you know, or if you have, you know, some type of like seasonal hiring or like a spike in hiring where, you know, like the company traditionally hires a ton in Q4 and then it slows down. We’ve just talked to so many recruiters over the, you know, three to four years that have been part of that like ping pong of like a company’s hiring a ton of recruiters and now they’re laying them all off and now they’re hiring again.

[00:18:20] So I think for clients, even if it costs more on the front end to do an RPO solution, but you’re not sure if you need this person long term, it’s better to spend the money more upfront because you’re going to be in a bad situation if you over hire and then have to, like you said, either re-resource people or let them go.

[00:18:37] And that’s just your brand and reputation. And TA is like one of the skillset sets I think that’s been hit the hardest over the past five years, at least the ones that we work on, you know? Well, and the good thing about us too, I mean for those listeners that don’t necessarily know Hirewell, we could do either solution.

[00:18:52] That’s always what’s one of the cool things about us. Like we place recruiters in jobs and then we have an RPO solution too, as well, [00:19:00] can easily help during those spike periods of time. So it’s really kind of more along the lines of what do you have budgeted for and what is the overall forecast of hiring look like over the next, you know, 6, 12, 18 month, period of time.

[00:19:13] So, I think that’s what’s one of the cool things that we can do. But I do think it’s a lot of folks on the HR side, I think can be a bit more scared of the RPO solution. Right. May have been burned on, you know, the higher cost or monthly cost or the recruiters that were necessarily allocated towards them.

[00:19:30] But, because you’re really, from a hiring perspective, you’re only as good as the people that you have actually recruiting. Yeah, completely. Well, and I think a lot of leaders too, you know, associate it with just like high volume recruiting. Where it’s like some of the projects we do, I mean, they’re all priced differently.

[00:19:43] They all look differently based off what the client’s hiring for. So it don’t have your mind go strictly to just like high volume recruiting, which RPO traditionally sometimes would brand it that way. Yeah. We’ve done projects that are purely, you know, they need to hire 50 salespeople or something in that [00:20:00] respect.

[00:20:00] It’s not just, you’re right. I think RPO does get branded as like, oh, hey, we have the 10 manufacturing facilities and we need these plant workers and you know, we don’t want to deal with it, so yeah, let’s outsource it, which, you know, we can do, but at the same time you can put together a plan that, still are corporate level employees and not just lower level volume workers necessarily that fit in RPO solution.

[00:20:25] So that’s definitely a good point. Yep. One of our last questions regarding executive hiring. One of the listeners asked, what mistakes do you see companies making when hiring executives? Let’s see here. There’s probably a few things. I think one, you know, executive hiring takes longer, so you really have to have the, and the process is obviously going to change somewhat throughout, but really knowing like who all is going to be involved?

[00:20:49] How long do we think this hire is actually going to take? Because typically folks that are interviewing for executive roles, you know, they potentially might be in process for another position. And like, again, if those [00:21:00] processes and timing don’t align, you can lose a good candidate. So I think really ironing out your process early on and just know what other executives, what stakeholders are going to need to be involved in the process.

[00:21:12] Getting them involved early so that they know where their role is because it is a much more detailed and in depth process whenever you’re looking to hire someone at that yeah. Knowing who to get involved in that process is obviously important.

[00:21:26] Another thing I feel like is, you know, some folks that haven’t had experience or hiring managers or leaders that haven’t hired for senior level folks, whether you’re using an agency or you’re using your internal recruiting team, do you put in assessments? Are you putting in,

[00:21:41] you know, there’s tons of them out there, the Hogan, the Wonderlich, Seacats of the world. Right. That, you know, assess personality and competencies as well. So it’s really kind of trying to figure out what those tools are that work best for you. Sometimes, you know, we get involved consultants on a coaching perspective standpoint.

[00:21:58] Yep. After [00:22:00] that actually, you know, do you bring in an executive coach once that person’s hired, help them integrate with that organization, that can be beneficial. Do you do those things or not? I mean, you know, when you’re hiring for whether it’s a CFO, CHRO role, right? All of thosethings and the integration piece is certainly very important. And you hope you learn that throughout the interview process, but I think some companies we’ve worked with have also seen the advantage of hiring an executive coach for that integration period. Yeah, yeah, completely.

[00:22:28] And when you made the point about just confidential searches, like you almost have to outsource it when it’s confidential. So that’s when we can come in and really kind of own that process and make sure that it stays confidential ’cause you can’t post it whenever you’re doing a confidential search.

[00:22:41] There’s just a lot more red tape to go around. But yeah, I think there’s a lot of things that you have to iron out on the front end before you kick off a search where with, you know, a lower level search, the turnaround time can be two, three weeks sometimes. And you know, you can come up with ideas on the fly, on how to navigate situations where with executive searches, you just have to kind of think through things [00:23:00] a little bit more strategically.

[00:23:01] Yeah. We definitely, enjoy executive searching side of the thing because even though it takes a little bit longer than, say more of the lower level roles, it’s like a puzzle that takes you maybe weeks versus one that takes you a day. Yeah. Well, and candidates that are at that level, like they understand that that process is gonna take longer and they get it.

[00:23:18] So it’s also, I think from going back to like our original question around like relationship building, like it’s fun to work with candidates at that level ’cause you really get to know them, you’re part of the process, you know, you’re an extension of them and vice versa. So, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, that is all the time we have for today.

[00:23:36] That was fun, you know. Yeah. Got a little different here, so, without a guest, but thanks for tuning into this week’s solo episode of Beyond the Offer. Hopefully, you’ve enjoyed getting to know us a little bit better. We will be back again next month with a new special guest. Quick reminder again on how you can support Beyond the Offer podcast.

[00:23:55] You can find all our content on our Hirewell, social media platform, which you can [00:24:00] find through Hirewell.com. Take care everyone, and thanks for tuning in. Cool. Bye guys. Thanks.