Hiring Is a Skill - Interview With Laura Mazzulo of East Side Staffing and Ken Monroe, CEO of Bchex [The Bad Hire Ep. 16]

00:00:00 This is The Bad Hire, the show with the best stories about the worst employees. We fired him, of course. People are crazy. It's like an HR nightmare. Right? One bad hire stole all of it. Crazy stuff. She got what she deserved. Oh. I'm your host, Ken Monroe, and every week we dive into real-life stories from the wild world of work and what can happen when the wrong person gets the job. These stories aren't just crazy, they're cautionary tales about lessons learned the hard way. Let's get started. This is so interesting that I was really intrigued that you only hire HR leaders.

00:00:42 Yeah. I was just like, okay, well, that's, you know, that's super interesting. It's his own horror stories. Yeah. That's his own bizarre thing. Well, you know, what I got out of that was, you know, when you're, and I think this is probably true, and at some point you get old enough to have or big enough to have, you know, an HR professional come in and help you. So much of when you're growing your company as a CEO, you're trying to, you know, you're doing that role, right? You're involved in every hire. You're trying to do whatever when it comes to culture and, you know, the good ones figure it out and then, you know, the bad ones don't. But you get to a place where, you know, you have to have somebody carry the torch there

00:01:25 and build the systems, you know, that allow you to scale. And I never really thought about, you wrote something that said, how you hire determines who you hire. Basically, if I recall, you wrote, how you hire determines who you hire and who you hire determines how great your company becomes. Right. And I thought, well, in no other position do you hire someone who now affects every hire after that. Yeah. You know, how, and so, you know, it kind of struck me in the business that, in the business that I'm in, the businesses that I do, you know, how I make a living, you know, just how critical these HR teams are.

00:02:08 And, you know, I, especially on the hiring side, I was telling someone the other day, we were talking about this, Laura, and I was talking about what I perceive their life to be like. Right. I don't, I'm not, I don't do it. Right. I'm a cog in the wheel. But I feel the same kind of pressure. And that is, you know, a thousand things right goes unnoticed. One thing wrong is completely focused in on in the hiring process, you know, and it's this, the hiring is a long process. It starts with somebody saying, I think I need this person. And then there's a discussion and then somebody frames out a job, you know, a job description.

00:02:50 And then, you know, there's an agreement and then they'd run ads. And then, you know, all this happens before you even talk to the first person. Right. Then you go through this interview cycle and you, you know, you finally hone down and you make an offer and then you start the onboarding. Sometimes the onboarding, you know, it's challenging. And, you know, I was talking about helping someone in my business understand. And that's the pressure they're under. If we're if we're late, if we're not fast, if we make mistakes there, they get yelled at. They get the pressure from whatever it is, you know, hiring managers out there, you know,

00:03:33 divisional leaders that are trying to put people in place. And, you know, that's that's the pressure, you know, the same pressure we feel. We're feeling the exact same pressure. So when someone calls and says, why is this taking so long? But, you know, that's the reason we want to eliminate that at every at every corner, because that's a pressure filled life to live. You know, you hire 10 great people. No one. You know, great job. That was flawless. Right. You know. Yeah. I mean, it's just such a complicated issue, which is why I said we just need to kind of hash it out a little bit. I think that. Hey, like the more I feel back the layer of the onion, you've realized no company really

00:04:15 invests in training their internal talent acquisition team or their internal recruiting team. So you have these bad recruiters or we you know, we hear these horror stories on the other side of candidates complaining about bad hiring process. And I interviewed 12 times and I was it was four months. It's not you know, I feel the same with candidates. It's not like they want to be bad. Like the internal recruiter doesn't want to be doing that. They often just haven't been trained on ways to be more efficient and use better processes and have better systems and be more assertive and confident and push back. So you're everyone's kind of the victim of a bad process that could so easily be fixed with a little humility and a desire to actually get better.

00:04:58 Yeah. And that's where the ball drops. And I think to your point, because I recruit HR, I have to convince HR leaders to become humble, to learn and to unlearn. And that's hard for them because they feel a pressure to be perfect, especially at something like hiring, which falls under their umbrella. So my job, the hardest part of my job, I would say, is to get them to a place of are you willing to totally dismantle how you've hired up until now and try something different? Yeah. I love it. Yeah. It's I was I was reading your some of your some of your posts and, you know, by the way, congratulations on being super successful online. That's awesome. Thank you.

00:05:38 Yeah. Years of LinkedIn. It kind of. But I think we haven't been talking about hiring as a skill all these years. We've just talked about it to your point, kind of like being a transactional thing. So there are like bad candidates and bad recruiters and bad processes, and we all just kind of complain about it. But actually, it's it's like being, you know, I always attribute it to people who play a sport or musical instrument or kids who struggle in a subject. You know, you just need to put in some time to get it right. And to your point, like there's a whole process before you meet candidates that has to be so tight and so efficient. And then it will move fast. Yeah. I just think it's there's a kind of an arrogance around hiring that I've been noticing in recent

00:06:20 years, just like, oh, yeah, I know how to do it. Yeah. And at some point, we all get to a point of like, ah. I was going to ask you this question, because there's a there's a little bit of. There's always been this kind of talk around the lack of, you know, HR is trying to rattle the organization and say, hey, pay attention. HR strategic. Right. It's not it's not it's not compliance. And and that was a real for a long time. That was a real you. You know, you could go to conferences about it. It was a movement. Right. Yeah. You had, you know, and then you started seeing chief HR officers and, you know, taking a position

00:07:01 in the C-suite. And I wonder now if you think that CEOs, especially in in up and coming companies, if they're smarter, if they have if they're any better in terms of understanding, you know, that, you know, you're a mantra recruiting retain the retain part. They figured out the retain piece of culture, you know, and all the pieces afterwards that I guess add up to retain. You think they're getting any smarter? There is such a disconnect between when you talk to a CEO and a founder or a head of HR. And so a CEO will say to me, I wish HR would have come to me and let me know they needed

00:07:43 training. They needed help. They needed external recruiters. They needed vendors. They needed partners. Like, of course, we would have spent money or invested in them to make their life easier. Instead, what happens is HR typically burns out and then goes to them and it's a little too late. And so it's a little bit on HR to feel like instead of just complaining about it, because I think they're often negotiating against themselves and they're often saying, like, if I go to my CEO, they're going to say no. Whereas the CEO is like, I absolutely would not have said no. So there's definitely a disconnect there between I think the strategic HR pros have learned how to be more assertive and confident. But that's actually still a massive problem because I meet a lot of them who aren't capable

00:08:23 of just those kinds of conversations, right? And it's, I guess, not easy for everybody to go to an executive and say what you need and want. But I think it's so important when you're trying to move something forward. Yeah, that's a theme. That's a theme. That's a theme I hear from you is the assertiveness. And I assume you mean that in a super positive way, but the ability to have a conversation with an executive, with a CEO, with an owner or founder and say, hey, you know, you may not want to hear this, but or this is the way it has to happen or should happen or this is good counsel. Correct. It's so funny because that never came hard to me. I don't know if it's like the New Yorker in me or what. That was never hard for me.

00:09:05 Even when I was early in my career, if I saw something wrong in a company I worked for, I just went to the top and told them what I noticed. But I do think for a lot of people that does not come naturally. And so they see a problem and then they just like swallow it and it doesn't make any sense. So I always when I'm coaching internal recruiters, I remind them, like, if you're seeing problems with your processes, you need vendors, you need help, you need tech that you're not getting access to. You have to tell somebody they're not going to know. Your CEO doesn't know what a hiring team needs or what an HR team needs. Yeah. We always want to blame the executive. I think sometimes we think we do. Right. I think sometimes we think we do.

00:09:47 I get approached. So I get, you know, the sales mantra to salespeople is like call to the highest level. Right. So they're calling above the HR leader. They're calling the CEO. They're calling the chief operating officer. And they're pitching stuff. Right. And I think about the if you are an HR leader and challenge to confront challenge to speak up and and, you know, CEO says, oh, I've got this super cool technology that this guy pitched me. It's it's super good. It's going to make us way. It's going to make us way efficient. You're going to love it. We're never going to have to speak to anyone else. It's going to do it all. Whatever it is, you know. And then you've got, you know, on the on the opposite end of that, you got CEO founder

00:10:33 tumbling down this thing. And you know, an HR leader looking at it going, oh, this is not going to end good. You know, I just don't. It's interesting that you said assertive could even be perceived as negative, because in my mind, it's only positive. If you want to be perceived as a strategic leader, the way I would define that is you're a person who comes forward with solutions. And so that means you also have to express the problem. Right. You have to be willing to say, you know, I listen to so many of your stories and a lot of it could be solved with better hiring processes. So it's like, yeah, you know, we're complaining about all these bad hires we've made. It's probably solvable if we actually try to improve. There's two. There's a lot of themes in there that I see. It's like I listen to these stories and others that come in and like, how in the world did

00:11:16 this person make it into the system? And second, often after some of these stories, we're looking at it going, why didn't why did they wait so long? Like this person just was tumbling out of control, you know, and they just kept sending them back to work and it continued and you hear it. And then finally, a year later, we, you know, and I think about. I guess we've nailed it with lack of assertion. There's usually somebody who sees a problem who's scared to say it. Yeah. And I don't know why. Because to me, there's only upside. Yeah. Lawsuits.

00:11:57 You know, everyone's afraid of, everyone's afraid of directing them. Yeah. And if you're having a conversation with your executive about something that's going on, that's not, I don't know. That shouldn't be driving. Yeah. For sure. Exactly. That's just, hey, I'm noticing something that we might need to escalate or get legal involved with. But it's like at least just flagging it, right? It feels like that's the problem is these things just don't even get flagged. So back in 2013, tell me about the journey to then. What had you been doing? Yeah. I had been working for a big recruiting firm from 2007 to 2012. 2007 was like a height of hiring.

00:12:41 So there were 22 recruiters on my team just placing HR people in New York alone. Cool. And then 2008 came. And so we had layoff, layoff, layoff. It was rough. By 2012, I was the last man remaining and I was running their HR practice alone. And I thought I should do this on my own and do it the way I want to do it with my own values. And so that's what led me to launch Eastside Staffing. 2013 was also an exciting time for hiring. I mean, I would not launch a recruiting firm today. Right. Then it was like everybody was hiring and everybody needed help and they welcomed the help. And then it's, you know, then it was a happy ride until 2020. And then the last couple of years have been tricky. You kind of have to ride a roller coaster.

00:13:23 Yeah. Well, all of us that depend on hiring are like that, right? We, you know, all of my, most of my businesses are all aligned to HR. So it's, it's in different verticals, but yeah, it is. Now we, we also do a lot of work in schools, which is super interesting hiring cycles. Yeah. If I was again explaining to someone the other day, you know, an HR pro who's hiring in school, the entire, the entire year of hiring is compressed into a two and a half month period, two month period. Like, and there's this impending event.

00:14:03 Like if you're late, right. And, and you're, and you deliver someone late on a, in a, in a typical role, you know, you're going to make some, it's going to ruffle some feathers. People will be, you know, they're going to call you slow. They're going to be, you know, there's lots of reasons they could be upset, but in a school class starts and there's going to be kids in that classroom. Right. And there's going to be like, we don't have anybody to teach second grade or, you know, seventh grade English. There's no one in that school that can qualify to teach it on this day and school started. So lots of pressure for them. In a way you need sometimes a deadline that you actually are working on a timeline. Yeah. They compress so much into, into that and, you know, supporting them and helping them

00:14:49 is a lot of times about just refining process and getting better and better and better at becoming faster and efficient and effective at, at, you know, not only doing things fast, but also creating a positive experience for them. You know, this, it's, you know, you want the experience of coming on to be positive. That's your first taste of the culture. Right. How did I get treated? How did they treat me along the way? Do they know what they were doing? You know, those are all like really positive things that. So interesting. As you're talking, I just had this like light bulb thought that. Because, because you were saying strategic HR, it was everyone's goal to be strategic, but no one really knew what that meant or how to get there. And so it's just kind of been a buzzword in a lot of ways.

00:15:30 The same is true on the recruiting end. So we've always on the external side, we've always referred to ourselves as, as recruiting consultants. Like that was always my title since 20 years ago. And then I think I understood what that meant as, you know, you're an external consultant, you add value. However, I think in the last few years, it's become even clearer that it's about being creative to find different solutions to meet the actual problems of the clients. Historically, it was always, okay, we need an external recruiter. We pay a fee. You find the person. It's a transaction. Lately, it's been more of, you know, I don't know if we need an external headhunter, but we need help. Our internal recruiters are struggling. Our process needs work. Our hiring managers need training.

00:16:12 Our processes are too long. Like, it's like I've actually started really peeling back layers of the onion and realizing the right solution isn't always just fill the job. It's actually, to use your point about education, like teach. Teach people. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. So not necessarily like staff augmentation. Here's some additional recruiters to go find some people, but more we're broken in these places. This doesn't feel right. This is inefficient. My people need to be better trained to do this. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. It just requires a team to admit that. Are you working to fill that now? Is that what you're doing? You're helping? The bulk of my business is still filling HR jobs where they're opening. So I'm still very much kind of seen as an external recruiter.

00:16:54 However, I think what I'm getting better at and what I'm enjoying is when clients call me and say something like, Laura, we've been working on this HR job for four months. Our internal recruiter is hitting a wall. She's brought in 25 people for us. We're not filling it. Instead of me just saying, okay, great, I'll fill it. Sometimes I'm offering, like, do you want me to work with them one-on-one for a few months? See what's going wrong. Maybe I can help figure out why it's been problematic. I'm sure there's a reason. You probably already have your candidate there. It's not usually an issue of more people. It's usually an issue of kind of identifying the talent. Are we asking the right questions? Is the process efficient? So I'm having fun with kind of hearing the problem and identifying exactly what they need.

00:17:38 But it's not always just pay a fee and be done with it. Right. You know? It seems, well, I guess they're both rewarding. I mean, I enjoy fixing things and building things. And so there's, it probably feeds that for you. That's really good. Well, I think we've, I think historically in recruitment, there's been an internal recruiter versus external recruiter battle. And the internal recruiter, rightfully so, is usually annoyed when they go to search because it's like they've already been working on it. Now we have to bring in an external person who's going to get all the credit. And get it done. And so I started noticing that dynamic and thinking, shouldn't I just help them? Like they probably just need some support.

00:18:19 And that could be in the form of training or coaching or something else. So that we're working as an actual team. And I think part of being strategic is also teamwork and not just kind of like outsourcing at all. Before we dive back into the chaos on the bad hire, this episode is brought to you by B-Checks. Hiring shouldn't feel like rolling the dice. Background checks should come with great tech, seamless integration, and customer service that delivers. That's B-Checks. Lightning fast results. Unmatched accuracy. Built in fraud prevention. We help you hire the right people. Now B-Checks plugs into over 100 HRIS and ATS systems.

00:19:03 So your background checks run smooth, fast, and backed by top level service. Protect your team. Protect your reputation. Protect your sanity. Go to B-Checks.io. That's B-C-H-E-X dot I-O. Yeah. I had a conversation this past week, earlier this week, with a former provost of a major university. And we were talking about, we were really talking about behaviors. And hiring for behaviors and looking for certain behavior sets. It's modeling and, you know, he's doing something at his university using some technology that defines a set of core behaviors, tests for them, and allows them to kind of open up their candidate pool beyond just resume fitness, right?

00:19:53 It's like, to try to find, hey, these people might not have the total, you know, the total experience or the skill set, but they have the behaviors of what we perceive the best performers to be. And we were in, it was in a university setting. And it struck me as he shared with me, I never really thought about this, but he was sharing that in a university setting, it's a very long process to hire someone. And that they've introduced this behavioral piece to help them get through the process to selecting. And the reason it's so important is the people who show up often show up with tenure.

00:20:36 They bring their tenure with them. It's a permanent hire the moment they pull the trigger. There's no escaping the bad hire there. They can't mess up. Yeah, it is. It is. They cannot. And oftentimes, it's, it's, they're well paid. It could mean in research grants and other things that are under their control that, you know, they might lose or if they, if they pull the trigger on the wrong person or, you know, it's just not a good fit. And so I thought, I did, you know, I just never, never imagined that. And listening to him describe the process and we were talking about how to improve the process, he was asking me questions.

00:21:19 And, you know, I, I really thought about walking away from that. You know, these, some of these things are just the differences in scale between trying to pull the trigger on a decision like that and how important the process was in very unique ways compared to how important the process was for target. Or somebody who's hiring lots of people and you still got to do it right. You know, well, and you're referring to really this push towards using data, which is so smart and logical, right? So you use competencies and use skills as a data point to make an accurate hiring decision, not off of gut feel, not out of, not out of instinct.

00:22:02 And for those of us that were trained that way 20 years ago, it isn't unlearning to be like, well, I like this guy more, but the other guy actually matches exactly what we need. You have to go that route. And I think it's, it's beautiful when you follow a process and it actually works. That's how managers start to trust it more. I had a question right now for you, but I think I deleted it. I had a question for you. It was going to be, I'm a big believer in that like most jobs, there are core behaviors that make people successful in most jobs. Um, but not all jobs require high skills.

00:22:46 Like you can, um, you could train skills faster than you can train behaviors. Behaviors are built over, in my opinion, years of coaching and development, and it's hard to change who you are, but it can happen. It doesn't mean it can't. It just means it's, I think it takes longer. Um, and then, then, then, so skills, uh, based versus behavior based. And, and, um, I was going to, uh, it, when I think about an HR leader. It's a combo. It has to be a combo. Well, I'm going to, that's okay. That's interesting. Cause I thought like, this has got to be 80% behavior. Like if I was hiring somebody, I think I will, I'm, I'm interested in your reaction to that.

00:23:31 Cause I would think, yeah, let me find the right behaviors. Cause they can go figure out the compliance hole they have or this hole, but, you know, do they have, uh, the assertiveness? Do they have, uh, the curiosity? Do they have, you know, the courage? What are, what are, what are those behaviors that you need to profile that that makes the perfect HR leader? Like, and maybe that's different dependent, depending on where you're at. You know, if you're at my company, it's one thing. If you're a bank of America, every team, every role should be different. Absolutely. Yeah. And usually it's a combo platter because let's say it's like a head of total rewards job. That's all about benefits and compensation.

00:24:12 They do need some skills to run that department, obviously. And so you need to check some of those boxes, but of course you need to check those. You know, we're still unfortunately often referring to them as culture fit questions, but they really are to your point behaviors. And, you know, there's a million ways we can refer to them. You know, I like sometimes cultural ad there. They're adding to your culture. They're not necessarily fitting your culture. They're bringing something in that is needed. And I think the other piece, like when I listened to a lot of the bad hire stories, I'm thinking, you know, are we asking candidates what they want and what they need? Because that's such an important part of it, too. It's not all about what's our wish list and then let's go find it.

00:24:54 It's like, what does the candidate want and need from us? And usually if it's mutual and the person identifies why this job, this company, this leader is right for them, that's when it's a good sign. Like if I have a client who's down to two candidates, kind of like, I don't know which one to choose. They're both scoring the same on the scorecards. They're both kind of showing up the same in interviews. I'm like, well, let's ask who wants it more. Like let's ask kind of what they're feeling. And usually there's one person who's really like, this is the place I want and this is why and this is what. So that really does help kind of, you know, it is a two person journey here. I think we often forget that. We just kind of go looking for what we want. I was going to ask you if you had a. So you've had I'm going to I'm just going to I'm not going to ask you how many, but I'm going to assume hundreds of placements you've done, if not thousands.

00:25:44 Yeah, I've never even counted. Right. So just consume a lot. All right. So a lot of repetitions to learn from, you know, what still shocks you, you know, about how CEOs treat the HR leadership role or that see. It still shocks me that they don't communicate well with each other. So it still shocks me, like I said earlier, that a CEO wants to help HR get better, but HR is not speaking up about it. And so there is often this bitterness where HR feels like they're not seen or heard, but they're not really saying anything. And then I think executives feel like they're not getting enough from HR because they're not kind of helping them. And so I try to remind both parties like CEO, you have to ask your HR people to speak up.

00:26:29 They're not naturally as good at it, maybe as your other department heads. So get them to tell you what they need and want, you know, kind of. There is a piece of what you're saying that sounds like you're a dating matchmaker. And a therapist. Right. Because you literally are. Yeah. You're like. No, it's so true. I just need you guys to communicate. I've always said they say they say recruiting is like marketing. And I've always said, no, recruiting is like psychology. There's no doubt. That's a much stronger comparison. Yeah. Because you have to be in the psyche of like, what is the hiring manager up against with themselves? Why are they feeling bitter about this? Why are they struggling with this? Why are they resisting this? And then why is the candidate being guarded?

00:27:10 And why are they? You know, it's just so much nuance. And when it's HR, to your point, there's this extra armor up because they feel like they should either know how to hire really well or know how to job search really well. They're feeling very resistant to advice. So first piece is getting all that guard down. Just like right now you're a candidate. Right now you're a hiring manager. I'm the expert. Let me help you. And then we can move forward. What's the favorite part of your favorite part of what you do? What's the favorite part of your job? What are you loving? Yeah. I love when hiring managers realize things they could be doing better. And so they start hiring better.

00:27:51 I think that I really hate watching people hire poorly because we have all seen just these horror stories from it. And it's all fixable if you're just willing to say, look, I've been in HR for 25 years. I've hired a million people, but I'm happy to relearn new things and unlearn things that don't work anymore. And I want to get this right. There is such humility and curiosity required to do that. And when it's being done, it's like magic. And I love it. And I feel like I'm really adding value there. You mentioned your three values are what? Curiosity. Kindness, curiosity, and humility. And I keep them on my desk so I don't forget. You also have a, don't you have a doll around your desk?

00:28:34 Yeah. Alice in Wonderland. Alice in Wonderland. Yeah. There you go. Curiosity. Who gave that to you? I always liked this story. Does your family member give that to you? Who gave that to you? Probably my mom when I was little. Your mom? Yeah. I think I have a set of Alice dolls, but this is the one I like the most. I just, I was listening to a podcast you were talking about. You were talking about that. Yeah. And how she helps you remember the curiosity piece. She does. Because, you know, look, I live in New York City, which it can be a very fast paced city where people feel like they need to have all the answers. And I just don't think you hire well if you act like you, I don't have all the answers. You know, it's, we learn as we go and we have to like pause and do it right.

00:29:17 And I think that it's, you have to come from a place of curiosity. Yeah. Like ask questions and seek wisdom and it's, I don't know. To me, that's arrogance just doesn't win in this, in this space when it comes to hiring. I don't, I don't, I don't know that I've, I think I've, I know how important people and hiring the right people are, right? That's, that's part of who we are and exist and what we do. But I never, I don't think I connected how important, how important that the role of finding the right person to find the right person. Yeah.

00:30:00 Right. When, when it, when I read your, you know, your bio and I was going over it and I was like, okay, an HR pro that does, just does HR. Cause you know, I get pitched, I get pitched recruiting all the time. Right. I mean, there's no shortage of people calling me and saying, Hey, let us help you. You know, I, I get two or three phone calls a day from that. And I get two or three venture capitalists calling me going, are you for sale? You know? So I guess what I've seen so many of them that are probably the specialists I see are in sales, maybe in tech. Yeah. Right. And maybe I just, I'm not in the, I'm not in it deep enough to know, Oh, there's all kinds.

00:30:43 There's just HR specialists everywhere. But you were the first person I had ever come across. It was like, Oh no, I do HR and HR only. Yeah. And you know, I was like, wow, that is, uh, it, it was just an indication to me that like, and it made me think about it more that how important that role is in my organization, you know, and to be, to be, to be honest with, you know, really transparent. I've had somebody in HR in my company. And they were good and got me to here. And I'm not sure that's the same person to get me to there. That's right.

00:31:24 Right. And, um, you know, when I got ahold of this company and we had to go through a massive culture shift and change and, and, and really changed the kind of underpinnings of the people dynamics of this business, which is, which is incredibly important to me. And I, and I really had someone who could help me understand from the staff's perspective, all the dials I needed to be turning, you know, it wasn't just, I'll just pay everybody more. That'll make them, you know, it was just so many little dials. Um, and she did a really great job. And then, um, and then she, she, she left. I didn't, I, you know, I would have, she'd been here forever. She, she left. And now, you know, as I contemplate that role, I contemplate what, you know, what's next for

00:32:09 me, you know, um, I'm going to begin, you know, hiring different types of people. Um, you know, we're moving so fast. Um, um, you know, and I, and I realized how important, um, cause I've got a handful of friends who are recruiters and they're all like, Oh no, I'll help you find somebody. Right. Right. And they're like generalists. Hey, you know, and that's, of course, I always remember I had a client, it must've been like 2014, 15. It was when the market was really booming. They invited in a bunch of their vendors for like a lunch. And I was sitting at the table with fellow recruiters and they were like, what do you do? I was like, I specialize in placing experienced HR pros mostly in New York.

00:32:52 And then like the rest of the table was like, I just work on whatever I can get my hands on. Right. I don't know how that, how does that work? Like my clients like that I'm an expert in something, but, um, yeah, I mean, I think as you were talking too, I was realizing that we generally aren't listening to the candidate feedback as a whole. So we all hear horror stories of, you know, our friends who interview and the process was awful. And I took me seven months and I finally got a rejection. Right. I don't know many executives who just pause and ask their internal recruiter or their external recruiter or the candidate that they hired. Like, how was your process with us comparative to what you experienced elsewhere?

00:33:32 What could we have done better? Did you notice anything that was kind of annoying? Like, tell me again, let me seek the information because maybe we can use that going forward. And you'd be amazed. People are happy to share. And again, it's not a scary conversation. It's a helpful conversation. Yeah. And so when I start a search with a new client, I'll always say, do you want me to share the feedback I receive? Because I'm going to receive feedback. And to your point of curiosity, the best managers are like, absolutely. Lay it. Like, let's gently tell me, of course, and I will, but tell me where we can be doing better. Yeah, I think one of your value propositions in life and business is your willingness to collect information and shoot straight. Yeah.

00:34:13 Am I right? Thank you. Yeah. It doesn't hurt to be a... Oh, I didn't want to hear that. I suck. I need to be better. Yeah, I know. But doing it in a... You're right. If Laura told me, I suck really bad at this, I'm going to be better. That's very insightful information. I feel like an early manager of mine used to say to me, you say things to clients I would never say. I'm like, well, I don't know what else to do. Do you stay connected to some of the people that you hire? Yes. I can imagine that's like a... It's become like a... It's kind of circular, especially when you crush it. You know, when someone gets somewhere... And they can be your client later on.

00:34:53 They might need your help somewhere else. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a long game. I mean, I'll get texts or emails from people that I placed 15 years ago that are like, I might need your help with something, you know. Yeah. If you... If you think about those people who are crushing it, what's the... What's the, like, it factor? You're like, oh, you know, I know, like... Of the group I know, like, what's the it factor for them? Yeah. What do you think makes them... I think we nailed it. We've nailed it so much in this conversation around humility and curiosity. Yeah. And I think... And it's worth just repeating in the sense that the people who aren't crushing it are

00:35:37 arrogant and they're in a fixed mindset. They believe they know everything and they don't really want to learn anything else. And there's a lot more... On both sides, really. On both sides. It's the CEO who thinks that. Yeah. And HR and the candidate, right? All three players, the internal recruiter, like everyone involved with the hiring process. Think about it. It's often an internal recruiter, sometimes an external, the candidate, the hiring manager, and the interviewers. I mean, it could be five, six people that we're talking about. And if they're arrogant and they're stuck in fixed mindset, it's a disaster. If everybody involved can just stay humble and grounded, curious, and try to just learn as we go, those are my favorite experiences.

00:36:18 Because people are usually pleasantly surprised somehow. The candidate is delighted. The hiring manager is happy. It's hard to teach that. And I think the only way I kind of try is just by expressing how important it is. Yeah. And it's worth a shot. I read your stuff and I came across one post and I was like, I actually sent my chief operating officer a letter or an email. And I just said, hey, can you send me all of our job ads? Yeah. What are we posting? You had pointed out some like code language. And I was like, I wonder how much code language we have in our job postings.

00:36:59 Where I've got people like Laura telling people, run from some company that says. Or to my point about feedback. Like asking the people you interview that you have a good rapport with. Like, what did you think of the ad? How did it look? And, you know, people are really happy to tell you when they're an expert in something. You know, actually my favorite advertisement was this company. It's all forwarded to you so you can get inspired. Or my favorite interview process was with this company. And this is why. I mean, that's how I learn. I'm constantly asking. Like, what was your favorite? What was it like? You can't believe how many hiring managers are on their phone. They're distracted. And they don't know. Nobody's ever said to them, just notice if you're texting. Like, it sounds simple.

00:37:40 But you have to be taught it sometimes. Like, this is important. Because in that 30 minutes, that person is judging everything you're doing. And so being super present. And really listening. And really engaging matters. So a lot of times, it's like the feedback that I have to give is subtle. It's not massive stuff. But it's little changes that are going to make a big impact. Yeah. Have you ever, your LinkedIn profile is so good. Thank you. Have you, do you ever like looked at a, you ever get a LinkedIn profile? Like, from somebody. I, when I think about an HR person, I'm like, oh, well, these are the experts in HR. I mean, they're the experts in LinkedIn because they spend so much time on it probably.

00:38:20 Like, have you ever, have you ever just looked at a LinkedIn profile and went, oh, my God. Oh, geez. What was she thinking? Or what was he thinking? Like. You know the biggest LinkedIn blunder I see? What is it? What is that? I want to know. It's remarkable. Yeah. This is important. People put their email address, because contact information is listed. They will have their email address from a job they had six jobs ago. So if I email them now to be like, are you looking for a new job? It's going to their old colleague. Just bounce. Yeah. Five years ago. Right. And I think they must be missing so much communication just by not updating their contact or putting their own Gmail on it or whatever.

00:39:01 Like, why do you have your, if you're going to put your work info, then it has to be updated. That's. I think that. They just don't update it. I think that answer is, as I get to know you, I think that answer is so you. Because you're not, I was like, I'll ask her this question and maybe she'll have a funny story about maybe something funny. And you immediately go to, you know, here's what's broken. And people could talk more and this should be fixed. I think you're a fixer. I'm a fixer because you know what it is? I don't, I, I'm all for humor too. And I love a good story. And I just, I'm like, let's not shame people for the mistakes they're making. Let's actually tell them like, okay, he made a mistake.

00:39:42 It's like what I would say to a kid, like, all right, what are we going to do differently next time? Right. It's like, I, and I tell, and that's all we can do is keep pointing it out and letting people know. And I think that these bad hires and these bad experiences are all opportunities to do it better than this time around. Well, I think that's one part of the show is to, is, is to, you know, have a little fun around the bonfire a little bit. Maybe these are our bonfire stories, but in the end, you know, we all, we all, you know, we know what makes life tough for, for, you know, people who live in this space. And, um, but we, you know, we all want to be better. We all want to do a great, we all want to avoid those things. Um, so.

00:40:23 And you know what I remind people, like your bad hire might be somebody else's best hire. Oh yeah. I mean, it's a wild thing. I have worked with candidates and I'm like, I can't imagine anyone wants to hire this person, but they land places and they do really well. And I'm like, there's just a match for everybody. Back to your dating analogy. There truly is. It would not work for me. It would not, I could not work with this individual, but believe it or not, somebody else is thriving. Oh, we had, we had a guy on the show who's got this little, he's got this, well, it's not a little, he's got this great production company. He now owns it. It's growing. And he was telling a bit of his journey, right? And so he was telling a story about bad hires and he goes, and the story he told was that he was the bad hire. Yeah.

00:41:03 Right. And it was just, and it was really a great, it was a story about, um, how he wanted this one role so bad because this was the ego role. This, this one role was like, this is the one that you want. Right. And so he was on and on and on about it. And, um, but, and he went after it and it just, but it didn't fit his. It really wasn't what he was great at. Right. So a mentor gives him the role. He completely smokes it bad, like just blows it up, crashes, you know, mentor has to come in behind him, fix it. You know, they nearly lose a huge client over it.

00:41:44 And, you know, that goes out to dinner and does some coaching with him. Right. And he, they, and he, but he put him on a path, you know, it helped define who he was. And I, and I was like, you know, not every bad, bad hire is a, is a reflection of the person in terms of who they are. Um, sometimes it's a reflection of just an, it's just an ill fit. Right. That's right. Yeah. And, and it, and so some are just terrible, crazy people have lost their mind kind of stories and others are just a misalignment. And his was a great misalignment story that just, you know, uh, one as a leader reminded me that when I find people that I feel like aren't a fit, you know, I thought they were

00:42:28 great. I hired them because I thought they were great. There was something there that made me think they're great. Right. Um, and I want them and then they don't perform. And so I often try to take responsibility for that. I'm like, I did something wrong. I missed something, something not right here. I, you know, either now before in the selection or now and when it's running, this is, I own this. And so I just kind of made a point to say, make sure to coach these people and mentor these people, you know, as we try to make a change, even if that's a change to somewhere else, you know, a hundred percent. And it goes back to my point about asking the candidate what they need and want. Like you might fall in love with a candidate because you think they're going to be perfect

00:43:10 for your team. But if they're not feeling excited about you as their leader, or for some reason they picture a different environment that they would thrive in, it's going to feel off, you know, like, cause I always say there's HR directors who want to work at big New York investment banks that are super corporate and there are HR people that thrive in startups and everything in between. And I love that part. I think it's good that we, you know, not one is bad or good or whatever. Yeah. It's so much, you know, the other piece we haven't touched on that we could talk hours about another time. It's just like self-awareness. Like so much of all of this is knowing who you are and admitting it. You know, we are a corporate investment bank and we're very boring and stuffy and we follow a ton of rules. Okay. You'll find the right people, but don't act like you're a startup.

00:43:54 It's going to, that's going to be a problem. Right. Don't write your ad. So I guess, yeah. You read the startup ads and they're so inspiring and you go, we should need to sound like that. We need to sound like that. That's not what it's like to work here, but. I remember like a decade ago, some company said to me, we're like the Google of insurance businesses. I'm like, no, you're not. Insurance is not thrilling. It might be a great place to work and very stable, but you know, a high cutting edge tech company, it is not. Yeah. So yeah, I think authenticity is so important. And I guess that goes back to my straight shooting. Yeah. I just think own who you are as a candidate, own who you are as a hiring manager, know your limitations, know your weaknesses, and then you can kind of tackle it all.

00:44:37 Yeah. I love it. But the bravado is where everybody gets messed up. They bring all these, I don't know, obstacles. Yeah. Where do you live at in New York? In Manhattan. You did? On the east side. Yeah. Really? East side, Stephanie. All right. Yeah. Where are you? I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina. Love it. Just north of Charlotte. Yeah. A little lake town. Great. You know, suburb. Good. Yeah. Opposite a big city. It's good stuff. You would love it here. I would. You would? It's very green. I need breaks from city living, for sure. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's very green.

00:45:18 It's very beautiful. Am I right? Nathan was in, you met Nathan. Nathan, he was in, I guess, close to Silicon Valley in California for a good bit, five or six years. And so I got him to move back to the east coast. That's smart. Backwards. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. He was a good hire. He was a good egg. Laura, that was great. I loved it. It was great talking to you. I know why you're just so good at this. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, Laura, we've recorded just a couple of these kind of like in this format. And what I've been asking, I guess, in closing, and you've kind of already covered it just

00:46:02 throughout our conversation. But just one piece of advice that you'd give to somebody who's in hiring, whether it's like to somebody who's like you, who has a very specific role, or does anybody who's building a team right now, what would that advice be? Yeah. Notice when you're getting in your own way when you're hiring. So notice if you're making it harder than it needs to be, or you're feeling a certain way, as the kids would say about hiring, just identify what's going on, because you can make it better. You can learn how to do it better, but you've got to be willing to kind of catch what might be going wrong. Yeah. And I'm going to- And no shame. And there's always room for improvement. There really is. And I'm going to take your advice and ask, as we get better at doing this podcast, after

00:46:48 being on here, what feedback could you give Nathan and I to say, hey, here's how you could do a better job? No, you guys were amazing. This was really fun. I'm excited to see kind of what clips you could pull out. Me too. And yeah, I think that it's, you guys have very much similar personalities to me, which is just nice. There's just a genuine kindness in your company and you're, and it's just, it shows. And even though it's, there's a edge to this content, I think it, to your point, it comes with kindness. It's not meant to be, you know, mean. Yeah. It's funny because some of the, only some of the negative feedback we've gotten is like, oh, I don't, I don't want to join in on like, you know, laughing at people's misfortune

00:47:29 that they're fine. And it's like, if you actually listen to the show, like, no, like, you know, we've said there's, there's some bad stories. And sometimes people are crazy. One of the themes is how bad I love good stories that have a positive ending. I know. Like, I love positive ending stories. So if you're going to tell me something bad happened, tell me the guy who got a great job and something good happened, you know. I agree. I think you're doing a good job of that, but it's important. I think that's important to, it's so funny. I don't like, I'm not like an Oprah person, but she came in my TikTok feed just recently, actually. And she said early on her show, they booked like, I forget what the story was, but it was

00:48:10 like an awful story. And she felt like it was kind of salacious. She didn't like the, like, she felt gross about it after. Like, why did we do this? We brought somebody on showcasing their negative stuff. So she said to her producers after, we need to be clear on what our intention is, because if we're going to bring on people with very tragic stories, I want to know what our purpose is. Are we trying to like, just put them on the stage? Or are we trying to help them? Are we trying to like, and she said, going forward after that, every time they booked a show, they all talked about like, here's who's coming on and here's kind of what our intention is with this thing. And I thought that was beautiful because it's easy to get sometimes wrapped up in the gossip, like all of us.

00:48:51 And that's, I think that's what helped me when I started offering like training and coaching, because it was usually clients just bitching to me of like, our internal recruiter is terrible. And I would like, I was used to just going with that, like kind of, that's okay. And that's what we do. And, and it's, I, something just switched in me of like, hold on, we can make it better. We don't have to just like hate them. We can. So I think that's, as you move forward, just kind of like, okay, we can talk about how awful the person was, but what was the lesson or what was the upside? So that, yeah, because also, obviously if someone's mentally ill. We had one the other day, Laura, that, that I know, Nathan, I know you know what I'm talking

00:49:31 about. Like, it was like midnight and I was working and I was, and I scrolled through TikTok and I saw one that we did. And I saw, because a lot of times I don't see the final edited version, you know, the clip ups, you know, they do all that and they just start. And so, and I saw it and there was, it, it was, the story was about someone who got injured the first day of work. Right. And made this crazy decision to like bike 10, 15 miles to the hospital, to the hospital. Right. Instead of calling on one. And I, you know, in the moment we're talking and you go, oh yeah, that's crazy.

00:50:14 And you're, and you kind of make fun of it. Right. You're like, oh, wow, that's crazy. You know? And I, I called Nathan or I sent him a text that night and I said, take that off. Go ahead. Take that tonight. Like get to it tonight and take it off because I don't feel good about what I said. I said, I don't want to be seen as somebody. That's not you. That's not your values. Yeah, it wasn't. I was like, I feel like I can have fun about someone who freaked out at a job, but I'm not going to have fun at the expense of someone being injured. Like that's not happening. I don't, I'd have no idea how that got past me in the moment, but seeing it clipped and put there, I was like, yeah, that's, that's not me. And I don't, I don't want to answer that question.

00:50:55 You know? No, I agree. It's a fine line. I think that, I think when we hear these horror stories, they're important to share so people don't feel alone, that they're not the only one who's had the reasons, but then it's like, what, what are we doing with it? What are we doing about it? You know, that's really, I think that if we, if you guys can keep, and we can keep exploring that together, but I think it's important that people know, like it's, it's, there is no shame. It's like, what can you do better next time? Like what was the lesson learned? And maybe that's a good question to start asking, you know, the host too. Yeah. I love it. So what'd you learn from that? What would you do differently next time? Yeah. I don't know. It is, it is tricky, but yeah, I, I find like, even when I'm at those events, like you're

00:51:37 saying, Ken, and that starts happening, like lately, I'm like, so what are we doing about it? Cause I, well, that's, that's you. You're the fixer. After a while, it's like, oh my God. Yeah. I guess I'm the fixer. I, that makes sense. That is totally my role, but people need fixing. So I'm happy to keep helping. Well, you would let necessarily people, but the process, you're wondering what's, what's, why is that happening? You know, it's, it just, it, it pours from you. This, this system, systems, high level thinking comes, comes, you know, when talking to you, you realize that you're less transactional, more systemic in terms of how to, you know,

00:52:18 and I think you're in a world where transactions occur and you have to live it. You live by the transactions, but you got to find a way to. Everybody wants an internal recruiting team. That's really strategic. Like, and that's where I'll say to them, like, I think the reason you often go to a headhunter is because we are more strategic because we just, by nature, looking at things a little bit from the outside. So that's why I have such joy training them because I'm like, they just don't know how to do this. Yeah. They wouldn't know, you know, thrown in there and just looking at resumes all day, but they're not really sure exactly what they're doing. Well, this has been awesome. I appreciate you. Thank you for the time. I'm excited to see the clips. I'm sure you'll find some stuff. Thanks for digging through it, Nathan.

00:52:59 That's your job. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And we'll, and we'll keep you in the loop on all, on all of it. We'll let you know when everything's up. uh, yeah, we'll definitely stay in touch. Let's keep talking. Yeah. See you later. I appreciate it. Thanks for your time, guys. All right. Thanks, Jeff. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you.