Talk Policy, Not Politics

Alright everybody, the 10 Minute Talent Rant is live. I’m James Hornick joined by Jeff Smith, and we are on the clock. You’re making a face at me already, Jeff. I’m very nervous about today’s rant. Nervous about today. The 10 Minute Talent Rant is our ongoing series where we breakdown things that are broken in the talent acquisition and hiring space,

maybe we pitch a solution or two. Before we dig in, all of our content can be found on talentinsights.hirewell.com. I don’t know if I was talking too loud, that just scared you or something. No, no. The content is what has me scared today. So this week’s topic, episode 107, very ill conceived “Talk policy, not politics”.

So backstory we have had for 107 episodes, whatever this has been three years, however long we’ve done this, we have had a long standing conversation that we would never, ever touch something even remotely adjacent to politics. And here we are. Yeah, here we are. And we’ve been at this since the middle of the pandemic.

There are plenty of opportunities for us to like talk politics on tangents that actually were related to hiring one way or another. But I regret to inform you, we need to finally do it, unfortunately. Now, we’re going to frame it in policy, not politics. So, you know, and there is kind of this one big red button fiscal policy issue that’s on everyone’s minds right now.

And I’m going to try and correlate it to recruiting. Yeah. And it’s also, this is a two for one special. There’s really two things we’re talking about. But first kind of getting into it. We have to talk about this because it’s the only thing that matters right now in the talent acquisition and hiring space.

Not the only thing, but everything else is just a far distant second- is tariffs. Every single conversation I have with clients, potential clients, old contacts, a lot of candidates. Everyone’s talking about it, how it’s impacting them. Not even every conversation, personal conversations, like even outside the business world, like this is the talking point.

It’s nonstop and we could have started talking about it two or three rants ago if we wanted to, but like, we just didn’t want to talk politics, but it’s unavoidable. And it’s frankly, I think we’re doing a disservice by not addressing it. And I couldn’t feel more strongly, things like this particular issue,

if you’re not plugged into it you’re probably unaware how much it’s already starting to impact things like hiring and recruiting in this particular realm. We are basically a leading indicator for other things that could be potentially happening, and we’re already seeing massive impacts from this. And it’s not even, nothing’s really even happened yet, which is also part of the problem.

We’ll get into that in a minute. Yep. At the exact same time, LinkedIn, all this stuff that happens in, Twitter and- Twitter and Facebook specifically. Like LinkedIn has now devolved into this cesspool of political nonsense. It’s the worst. Like it’s the worst and it’s very centered around the last year or so like you’d see some stuff but it is- the last 12 months has been insufferable Yeah. I emplore everybody,

this is anyone who this resonates with like that thing that you liked that insinuated something that’s probably utterly insane, I saw it as every single one of your followers. Popped right up in my feed. So like, where are we? And here, we’re going to kind of get into the meat of what’s happening here. So the first thing is

policy versus politics, specifically in business. So, tariffs are not a left-right issue. They are an economic policy issue. It’s why I wore my collared shirt today. You can’t take anybody seriously on economics in a Phish shirt. Hiring delays, supply chain issues. All of these things have economic consequences, and they are not partisan talking points, no matter how much you want to rage on the libs or, you know, the Nazis.

It doesn’t matter. Many business leaders across the political spectrum agree, it’s not the policy so much as the uncertainty that is the problem. So companies are struggling to plan around this uncertainty and pricing and supply chains will remain unclear until that is so. Yeah. We saw things come to a screeching halt.

Well, not a full halt, but like, I can’t, I can’t even explain. The pipeline we had both for potential new clients and for just open jobs from our existing client base we had going into January looked enormous. Yeah. Way bigger than last year, the year before. It looked like this was going to be a gangbusters, blow it out of the park, like massive hiring year.

It has not panned out that way. Now, we’re doing well, we’re doing all right. Like, it’s not like it’s like down to zero where it’s like all this, it’s like COVID again. But the rate at which things have not converted and not panned out because the amount of things have been put on hold, put on the back burner,

it was just like jarring to see. And we’re seeing it every day. Manufacturing companies, supply chain companies, even tech companies that kind of services, like, that’s a huge part of their own economy. Everything’s just kind of been put on hold and frozen due to all the uncertainty around it. As Jeff was saying, it’s not even like, we don’t know what the tariffs are or aren’t. It’s the lack of- no one can do anything or make any decisions until people actually know, like, what’s actually happening right now.

Therefore, they can’t commit to like- companies hire when they have new initiatives or they want to start focusing more areas. They can’t do any of that right now. If they touch anything that would delay the global supply chain, which is damn near every company out there on one way, shape or form. I feel like every single person has seen the soundbite of like the guy, the dealership owner who’s like, well, I don’t know if I’m selling my car for $50,000 or $62,000. Like it’s a significant difference. All right. I talked about it before, like, I mean the absolute, just degradation of political conversations. I hope this resonates with everybody. We have to be able to talk about this stuff. Yeah, we have to. Like mentioned, LinkedIn has turned into this like political battleground, and it’s, in my opinion, mirrors some of the worst qualities of Facebook and Twitter. And these meaningful discussions that have to happen about trade policy and economic issues are, surprise, you know, devalued down to these ideological shitposting fights.

It’s a mess. And the fear of being labeled politically prevents any actual real conversation about business challenges from happening and it eliminates nuance. Nuance is Gone in this day and age on LinkedIn and it has reduced everything down to well, this is just an us versus them debate and no one’s actually thinking about how any of what they support or don’t support actually matters to their specific business.

Yeah. What i’d like to do is kind of relate conversations we’ve had other people are seeing out there and how this is already impacting them. So I mentioned us, like the hiring, what we’ve seen. Like hiring is a hundred percent slowed down compared to what it looked like it was going to be before all this stuff kind of kicked off.

I got an anecdote, got a friend who works in manufacturing. He’s a hardcore conservative. He’s up in arms about this because he cannot get quotes from suppliers to buy the things they need to create their products. He’s like, it’s, it’s just, it’s absolute insanity. Like he’s in a panic. If this stuff doesn’t actually get sorted out soon, like he doesn’t know where their business is going to go.

Yeah. And you’ve got, then you’ve got private conversations with their subject matter experts in all of our lives. These conversations are more productive when you stop putting it through the lens of left versus right. Like, people across all ideologies agree wholeheartedly that economic instability is bad.

Yeah. It’s bad. Shouldn’t be hard to figure that one out. It’s not hard. So everyone, if you have investments, everyone is losing money right now. Everyone. You can’t be making money right now. It’s not possible. Now, you could be looking at the future of the market and say, well, I’m going to buy low and I’ll like get into the intricacies of it.

Fine. But the amount of mental gymnastics that everyone is putting into like pushing their side of the agenda is wild. Yeah. It’s insanity. What we want is Trump or any other politician or any other administration to stick to a policy, stay in the lane and own the decision because then at least businesses can make their choice on how they’re going to price things, how they’re going to go to market, et cetera.

Yeah. And that’s not even getting the minutiae of like what tariffs actually do. So like, Craig Levy is a CFO that I know. He’s been a CFO of multiple successful companies. He’s doing consulting right now, and he’s just like, it’s a it’s a shit show. He’s like, it’s economics. Tariffs get passed on to consumers

full stop. Full stop. Yeah. No one who’s, no one who’s a true market driven capitalist support tariffs. Like it only benefits countries that are economically disadvantaged, which we’re not being from the world’s strongest economy that’s ever existed. Because the problem is too, is like you see, like non tariff competitors raise their prices,

so prices go up. Like doesn’t benefit anyone. Anyways, I digress. One of the funniest movies of Gen X makes fun of this exact thing. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Yeah. They make fun of it. It’s insane. Capital investment is frozen again. And you’ve got like, why bill? It was looking, it was looking so good.

Everyone’s getting excited for this year about how much capital investment there was going to be announced. Once again, off the table. Why would you build the US factory right now? And build a factory for it to not pan out because then everything gets lifted. We have a customer right now where that’s, they built a factory and there’s no machines in it. Look, the bottom line is diplomacy is now weekend and tariffs are basically just being used as a blunt object economically to bludgeon those, you know, less fortunate than us, which is

shitty. I mean, I even forgot to mention this to you. We even have, we had one client who is a software company, which you think, oh, they’re going to be, but they work in the supply chain space and they’re putting things, slowing things down because they’re worried about what counter tariffs they might run into.

Like, it’s affecting everyone. It’s the end decision. All right, takeaways. Takeaways, first thing just- I wish LinkedIn could get back. I don’t, maybe it always sucked. I don’t know. But like avoiding personal attacks and just belittling people. It’s just everyone sees you do it.

I don’t care how passionately you feel about something like, it- I don’t want to be friends. I don’t want to be colleagues. It’s like, okay. But what if you need a job from somebody who’s, it’s just, it’s so short sighted. Everyone sees you do it. It’s going to hurt your career. Like, it’s just not the place for it.

And then kind of further on that, I just, I also, when I urge people to just recognize that, like, politicians in the media, they benefit from division. They manufacture the rage. And it’s your job as an intelligent human being just not fall in the trap of it. You know, these types of things, they don’t like yelling and swearing and insulting people does not help- is not going to change the world.

It’s not going to change their mind. It’s just not, it’s not fruitful in any way. But at the same time too, I also feel I could not feel more strongly that we have to be able to talk about policy, though, and focus on facts, talk about theory, how it impacts people. I would even go so far to say that, like, the fact that we’ve stopped doing this as a society is the reason why our choices of politicians on both sides are so bad.

When you remove nuance out of the conversation, an intelligent conversation, all you have to go by are memes to pick like who your leaders are. And it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. I know we have a global reach, but I’m American. You’re like, I like being an American. I’m proud of being American. Like

that is completely lost now. And I do lean a certain way, and I still like the flag, I like to wear the red, white, and blue, like, it’s kind of fun being, it’s, it’s losing a little bit of that luster. Look, just don’t get dragged in the mud. Everyone need, me included, like, I am not, you know, I am susceptible too. Like, you cannot get drug into these Biden is old and corrupt and senile and Trump is a fascist. Like everyone shuts down. Both sides. Even if you believe those things, it just shuts everyone down.

Yes. It’s just complex problems as we said, it requires nuance. Tariffs are a simple blunt tool that are just not going to solve like our underlying societal issues. So too long, didn’t read, just resist hitting like on that insane post. We are short on clock. That’s a wrap for this week. I hope people come back again next time.

Who knows what we’re going to get labeled as, just now. Thanks for tuning in to the 10 Minute Talent Rant, part of the Talent Insights Series, which is always available for replay on talentinsights.hirewell.com, as well as YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon. Jeff, thanks again as always.

Everyone out there, see you soon.