The RecOps Playbook: Revolutionizing TA with James Colino

[00:00:10] Welcome to The Recruiting Book Club. I'm Carmen Hudson, Recruiting Consultant and former TA leader and book author. With each episode of this podcast, I have invited a guest who's written a book about recruiting, sourcing or TA leadership. I like to read each book before the interview and that makes our conversations rich and useful. And sometimes we veer off the topic of the actual book and we get into TA issues. So I hope that makes it interesting and useful to you.

[00:00:38] Please let me know what you think. Or if you have a favorite TA book, I'll add it to my list of folks to be interviewed. I hope you enjoy this podcast.

[00:00:50] Well, I am excited today because when I started this project, I wanted to go out and interview recruiters who had written books. And I thought I knew most of the recruiters who had written books or I knew of them or knew of their books.

[00:01:04] Yours was something new that I discovered. A, it's a newer book, but also I didn't know that there was someone working on this category of recruiting operations. And I got the book and I read it and I will tell you I was extremely excited. I'm a recruiting geek and nerd.

[00:01:21] And you spoke to every side of that. So I am excited today to be here with James Colino, who has been working in TA for quite some time. I'll let you introduce yourself.

[00:01:33] And then I've got a ton of questions that I want to get into the book. I 100% endorse everyone going out.

[00:01:39] And if you haven't already getting a copy of this book and committing it to memory.

[00:01:45] Wow. I appreciate that, Carmen. And glad to hear that I've flown under the radar for my whole career.

[00:01:52] That's kind of been my MO, you know, bit of an introvert. Don't like the center stage so much, but I'll give you a little background about me.

[00:02:02] And I think the origin story kind of, I think, connects probably to the book pretty well.

[00:02:08] So, you know, I kind of an odd background for somebody in talent acquisition leadership.

[00:02:15] You know, I've been in TA my whole life or my whole career rather.

[00:02:20] And, you know, the thing that I think is kind of different is that I've spent probably half my time, so actually a little bit more than half my time in large companies as a TA leader,

[00:02:32] typically walking into, you know, some sort of situation that wasn't good.

[00:02:36] You know, whether there wasn't a department or the department was broken or we were transitioning from an RPO to an in-house, you know, talent acquisition function.

[00:02:47] So I did that at Pfizer, you know, early in my career.

[00:02:51] I spent eight or nine years, I think, at the Hershey Company as the head of talent acquisition for North America and spent the last five years at a company called Sheets.

[00:03:02] And we're a 750-store convenience retailer on the East Coast.

[00:03:08] So pretty big companies, you know, heads of talent acquisition roles.

[00:03:12] And then in between those roles, I've had entrepreneurial ventures.

[00:03:17] So early in the 2000s, I had a job board that I built and sold called Spanishjobs.com.

[00:03:26] And then more recently, I started, grew and sold an interview technology company called Hirebar to interview stream.

[00:03:36] And then I took some time off.

[00:03:38] We can talk a little bit about that time because that's when I wrote the book.

[00:03:42] I took three or four months off kind of by design and wrote the book.

[00:03:48] And so, you know, post writing the book, I've been at Sheets, you know, really putting the things that I wrote about into practice.

[00:03:57] And, you know, so I'm super, super pumped to talk to you about any and all of that today.

[00:04:02] Fantastic. Fantastic.

[00:04:04] Just looking at your LinkedIn profile, just your first sentence there, it says, recruiting has become complicated.

[00:04:10] And I think that sort of is the structure that underlies everything that you write about.

[00:04:16] Why has it become complicated?

[00:04:18] What does it look like?

[00:04:19] Why have we built on top of process and technology something that is that we're not able to manage well?

[00:04:28] Why is it in a state that it's in?

[00:04:30] Look, I think it comes from a good place.

[00:04:33] Like we we all know lots of people in the TA space and we're all ambitious.

[00:04:38] We all want things to be better.

[00:04:41] And so I think whenever something new comes out, we want to try it.

[00:04:45] Right.

[00:04:46] Whether it's technology or a process or program, we're always looking for that edge.

[00:04:52] I think the business demands that from us.

[00:04:54] Right.

[00:04:55] Right.

[00:04:55] Business leaders want us to be constantly looking around corners and and helping them find the best talent.

[00:05:02] So so I think the complexity really comes from that more recently.

[00:05:07] And I think what I you know, this book isn't about like TA tech in particular.

[00:05:13] But I think a lot of the a lot of the challenges have come from just the ability to to build point solutions, you know, point technology solutions in over the last, you know, really like seven, eight years.

[00:05:27] Mm hmm.

[00:05:28] You know, I'm guilty of doing that.

[00:05:30] You know, I stepped out of a good corporate job to build something that was a problem that I had at Hershey, which was trying to do consistent behavioral based competency based interviews across a global footprint.

[00:05:46] And there wasn't anything on the market.

[00:05:48] So I'm like, hey, I can go build this and do it and sell it.

[00:05:51] And and so I did.

[00:05:53] And so so that's where a lot of the complexity comes from now is you've got this ecosystem of tech that as a talent acquisition leader, you know, most of us are a little bit disconnected now from the configuration and the integration and, you know, all the guts of it.

[00:06:08] Your adoption.

[00:06:09] Yeah, the adoption.

[00:06:10] And so we end up going to these conferences, coming back and saying, like, hey, let's buy this thing that from this person that I talked to.

[00:06:17] And, you know, your recruiters are like, I can't take on another like system.

[00:06:23] So so that's sort of the genesis, I think, of of thinking about, OK, we all want to improve what we're doing.

[00:06:29] We all want to transform our recruiting functions.

[00:06:32] But we're overwhelmed by everything that's on the market.

[00:06:35] We're overwhelmed by trying to implement it.

[00:06:37] And quite frankly, our H.R.I.T. partners are like, hey, you know, you need to limit what you're sending our way.

[00:06:44] That's it. That's it.

[00:06:45] We we are taking on everything.

[00:06:48] The market is presenting us with multiple, multiple opportunities to attack this problem or this problem.

[00:06:54] And we're doing it in a way that doesn't seem to be organized.

[00:06:59] So what you propose is that we build a practice.

[00:07:03] How do you convince your leadership that this needs to be built?

[00:07:08] I have worked in smaller organizations and larger organizations.

[00:07:13] And I will tell you that there's some recognition that we need some of this work done, but very little appetite for a team of people to do this.

[00:07:22] Yeah.

[00:07:23] So true.

[00:07:24] You know, so true.

[00:07:26] I think where, you know, where I've had, you know, some success is using analogies for the business.

[00:07:33] You know, at Hershey, for example, we were a manufacturing company and we had resources dedicated to lean manufacturing and Six Sigma.

[00:07:42] Right.

[00:07:43] There was people that were, you know, able to process map a system and build better chocolate faster at a lower cost with fewer defects.

[00:07:53] Right.

[00:07:53] And so when you contextualize recruiting as nothing more than a process and the people are the product and that that process needs to be optimized, a light goes on for them and they begin to understand it.

[00:08:09] So I think part of it is storytelling.

[00:08:11] You know, if the leader can do some storytelling, build some analogies between their current business and the needs and what they're trying to do, you're going to be a little bit more successful.

[00:08:22] I think the other thing that's helpful is when you can do maybe some pilots of some things and show that, look, we made some significant improvements here.

[00:08:32] If you want to see us make more, you know, we need some resources or I need some dollars to hire someone in who's external consultant who can help us with this and just showing those proof points and the dollar value maybe of time saved or new positions filled that we couldn't normally fill.

[00:08:52] Whatever happens to be whatever the hot button issue is at the company.

[00:08:55] Gotcha.

[00:08:56] Gotcha.

[00:08:57] Tell me a little bit about your first RecOps team.

[00:09:00] How did it come together?

[00:09:01] How did you build it?

[00:09:02] Who did you include as part of the team?

[00:09:06] So I would say my first RecOps team was me.

[00:09:12] You know, of course, at Hershey, I had a very future focused head of HR.

[00:09:19] She came in from the outside.

[00:09:21] She was kind of a change agent.

[00:09:24] And, you know, I got to know her a little bit and she kind of tapped me on the shoulder one day and she's like, hey, things are, you know, we're,

[00:09:31] we're trying to grow globally, right?

[00:09:34] And we're a domestic company today.

[00:09:36] And so when we do that, things are going to break.

[00:09:39] One of those things is going to be, you know, our employment brand.

[00:09:43] Another one's going to be our analytics, our processes.

[00:09:46] She's like, I need you to sit at the center of that, figure all that out.

[00:09:49] And so she actually put me into a role.

[00:09:51] I think the role was like manager of, it was manager of talent acquisition, analytics, and something else.

[00:10:00] I forget.

[00:10:00] It was like this huge, you know, mumble jumble job title.

[00:10:04] But that was my first real role.

[00:10:08] Now, we all do this work off the side of our desks, right?

[00:10:13] And that's part of the problem that I write about in the book.

[00:10:16] So that was my first one.

[00:10:17] And I ended up having one other person and then a temp that I was able to put together to help me on the analytics side.

[00:10:27] And then on the implementation side, because we had to put in some, some technology that, you know, that we were going to use globally.

[00:10:35] Gotcha.

[00:10:35] And so from there, you created larger teams.

[00:10:39] You started to really sink your teeth into this model.

[00:10:43] How do you select?

[00:10:45] How do you find?

[00:10:46] How do you find the people even to do this work?

[00:10:49] Because they're not necessarily, you're not looking for the same skills as you might be looking for in terms of a recruiter or sourcer.

[00:10:56] Hi there.

[00:10:57] I'm Peter Zollman.

[00:10:58] I'm a co-host of the Inside Job Boards and Recruitment Marketplaces podcast.

[00:11:03] And I'm Steven Rothberg.

[00:11:04] And I guess that makes me the other co-host.

[00:11:06] Every other week, we're joined by guests from the world's leading job sites.

[00:11:10] Together, we analyze news about general niche and aggregator job board and Recruitment Marketplaces sites.

[00:11:17] Make sure you sign up and subscribe today.

[00:11:21] Yeah, I'll tell you, I'm not necessarily wedded to any particular process here.

[00:11:26] I think this is really a skills question.

[00:11:29] My current RecOps team today, I have two people.

[00:11:34] And one of them actually came from our real estate division.

[00:11:39] She was an administrative assistant, essentially, in our commercial real estate division inside of Sheets.

[00:11:46] We build a lot of stores.

[00:11:49] And so she was at the center of project management and technology.

[00:11:55] So she managed all the systems.

[00:11:56] And so when I posted my job, she applied.

[00:12:01] And I looked at her resume.

[00:12:04] You know, you're always biased when you look at a resume.

[00:12:07] Right.

[00:12:08] So I'm expecting absolutely nothing.

[00:12:10] But then when she came in and I went through the questions that I had that would extract whether or not someone had the behaviors and the skills to do the type of work that I needed them to do,

[00:12:21] she rose to the top.

[00:12:23] So she came from an administrative assistant position and just had like project management, you know, tech implementation, tech adoption.

[00:12:32] And then my other person works a little bit more on the innovative, on the innovation side.

[00:12:37] So she came to us with no talent acquisition experience.

[00:12:42] She was a head of marketing for a startup company.

[00:12:46] And what I really needed from her, we spend a lot of money on advertising, you know, because we're a high volume shop.

[00:12:53] We hire 20,000 plus people a year.

[00:12:55] So I was looking for a conversion rate optimization specialist.

[00:13:00] And so she's become excellent at looking at all of our metrics and our ratios.

[00:13:08] She stood up our CRM, built all of our messaging sequences, helping us with sourcing messaging sequences and measuring our effectiveness there.

[00:13:17] So I think it really, Carmen, comes down to like what is it that you need to do?

[00:13:22] Like where are you on your path?

[00:13:24] And who are the people that have the skills that can get you there the fastest?

[00:13:29] I think that is a really great call out to think about what it is that you're looking for, what it is that you need.

[00:13:36] It's really, I think it would be very easy to rush into this and bring a few recruiters along with you and not have the right set of skills to deliver what you need to deliver.

[00:13:46] So on page 47 of your book, I have the hard copy version.

[00:13:52] You list out just the components of a rec practice.

[00:13:56] And so you talk about building a great model so that people know what to expect from this team so that TA knows and that the businesses know what you're going to deliver.

[00:14:08] So you talk about understanding your foundational activities and that doesn't always include everything or everything that you think that it should.

[00:14:15] And I think you addressed this a little bit, but you talk about, you know, keeping this as a team that delivers a certain set of business objectives versus being something that everyone just kind of says, we'll throw it over to the rec ops team, right?

[00:14:31] You talk about meeting dedicated resources, you talk about clarity in your mission, and you talk about managing this as a practice.

[00:14:40] And so just thinking about those as your major objectives, how close are you able to get?

[00:14:47] Tell me a little bit about your successes.

[00:14:50] What were you able to do or what have you been able to do within Sheets or other organizations so that everyone understands the value of this?

[00:14:59] I'll back up just a bit to something you said about the model, because I think the model is the most important thing here.

[00:15:06] I think if you put the model in place, it doesn't matter what industry you're in, where you are in the world, what your company does, how many hires you make.

[00:15:15] If you put the model in place, you can get results, whatever results that you're prioritizing.

[00:15:21] So the model, I call it the rec ops framework.

[00:15:25] You know, when I write today or when I speak today, it's called the framework.

[00:15:29] So the first pillar of the framework is the strategy pillar.

[00:15:33] So that's your mission, your vision, your strategy, and your action plan.

[00:15:38] So that's sort of like your target.

[00:15:40] That's where you identify what it is that you're trying to transform in your function.

[00:15:44] The second pillar is the operations pillar.

[00:15:48] And those are all the underlying things that make your function operate efficiently.

[00:15:53] So if you think about like your annual calendar, for example, if you're a TA leader and you know when like your internship program's popping off and when you're, you know, when you're fall and your spring, when it brand campaigns popping off.

[00:16:05] And, you know, when is, when is your performance management, like all that stuff, you can figure that out and be more clinical throughout the year.

[00:16:13] So that's going to help you with your budgeting, with your team development, all of those things.

[00:16:18] So that's the second pillar is ops.

[00:16:21] The third pillar is recruiting.

[00:16:23] So that's just your pure play, like, you know, intake, sourcing, interview, hire, right?

[00:16:28] And then there's an insights pillar that feeds off of the three pillars to the left.

[00:16:33] And that's really where you figure out what's working and what's not working in your function.

[00:16:39] And then the final pillar is actually the driver of the framework, which is your rec ops pillar.

[00:16:45] Okay.

[00:16:45] And that's where you do the design thinking or the process improvement, whatever it is that you're going to do.

[00:16:51] And then the practice is really like you continuing to do those five things in the framework.

[00:16:56] That is the rec ops practice.

[00:16:58] That's how you get continuous improvement.

[00:17:00] So to answer your question, then we use this framework.

[00:17:04] I just presented at a conference recently.

[00:17:07] It was a three-year case study of how we use the framework to drive records, record for us, like record breaking applicant flow in one of the worst down labor markets in the history of, you know, of the United States.

[00:17:24] And so it wasn't just one thing that we did.

[00:17:27] It was a continuous attack on all the things that were preventing us from preventing applicants, rather, from getting through our process.

[00:17:36] So, for example, one of them was drug testing.

[00:17:39] You know, we looked at it.

[00:17:41] You know, we did some research.

[00:17:42] We found that we were one of the only retailers still left in the business who were, you know, requiring our frontline employees to, you know, to do like essentially marijuana drug testing, for example.

[00:17:52] Right.

[00:17:53] Right.

[00:17:54] So we looked at it.

[00:17:54] We made the business decision.

[00:17:56] We talked with our partners and our vendors and we decoupled it, you know, from our process.

[00:18:02] Another thing we did was we stood up an EVP, employee value proposition.

[00:18:06] We didn't have one.

[00:18:07] Right.

[00:18:07] And we needed something to sit at the core of, you know, of our messaging frameworks.

[00:18:13] And so we built that.

[00:18:15] Right.

[00:18:15] And so that's what the RecOps practitioners do for us is they look at what are the things that are preventing us from doing the thing that we really need to do, which is hire great people.

[00:18:25] And we systematically remove them and we see what it does to the system.

[00:18:29] And then we act again and again and again until we reach a period typically where it's not perfect, but it's good enough.

[00:18:36] Is your business leadership aware of the work that you're doing and what's been their response?

[00:18:43] Yeah, I will tell you, at least where I'm at today, Cheats, I've never seen a company whose leadership is more interested and involved in talent acquisition.

[00:18:55] They have great questions.

[00:18:57] They want to know they want to see all the data.

[00:19:00] You know, they want to know, you know, what we're up to next to their they're pushing us to do things.

[00:19:06] And, you know, we're bringing things to them as well.

[00:19:08] So we have regular meetings with them where, you know, we share our key data and analytics and we go to them for our biggest decisions.

[00:19:18] Like, obviously, that drug test removal decision, that wasn't that wasn't a me call.

[00:19:23] That was, you know, that was that was a big call for the company to make.

[00:19:28] So.

[00:19:28] So, yeah, they're super involved.

[00:19:30] So you also talk about your major objectives.

[00:19:33] I think that sort of aligned with how you laid out the work, enabling insights, embracing technology and designing experiences.

[00:19:42] Did you place a bet on one over the other?

[00:19:45] Did you try to accomplish all three?

[00:19:48] Is it situational?

[00:19:50] Does it depend on the work that's needed in that organization?

[00:19:53] How do you decide on what to attack?

[00:19:57] Yeah, I'm glad you pulled that out of the book.

[00:19:59] Very insightful.

[00:20:00] I read it very carefully and I'm going to read it again.

[00:20:05] So, as you know, you know, when you write a book, there's the thing that you wrote and then there's like what your editor reads and then comes back and tells you, like, isn't clear.

[00:20:16] So the first iteration of the book, I wrote it in like three months.

[00:20:19] So it was it was pretty, pretty quick.

[00:20:22] You know, you sit down every morning for at least an hour and you try to try to get two to three pages, you know, if you're lucky.

[00:20:29] Right.

[00:20:29] And so what I ended up writing the first time around was I was just so excited about the topic.

[00:20:34] I started writing this book, like you can fix this and you can fix that and rec ops can fix it.

[00:20:39] So it was a collection of all these things that you can fix.

[00:20:42] And then I kind of stood back, you know, with Metador and and she said, well, like this is all over the place.

[00:20:49] Like what's really important?

[00:20:50] Like what is it that's important for someone to focus on today if they want to implement rec ops in their function?

[00:20:58] And so I appreciated that, you know, that focus, because when you looked at a lot of the things that I was talking about, they dealt with embracing technology.

[00:21:08] So that means like really paying attention to understanding the marketplace that we're in, all the tools that, you know, that live in the marketplace, how to buy them, how to implement them and then not forgetting about the adoption phase.

[00:21:24] OK, so I think that was that was critical.

[00:21:27] The other one you mentioned was enabling insights.

[00:21:30] So I talked about that in the pillar, the rec ops framework.

[00:21:33] There's a pillar specifically on on insights.

[00:21:36] And then the other one is around experiences.

[00:21:40] That one to me is more like icing on the cake, because when when you're a new leader, maybe coming into a new situation and the recruiting is broken or the last thing you're thinking about is is experience.

[00:21:52] Like you'll get to it.

[00:21:54] Like you'll get to it.

[00:21:54] But you want to fix like the major systems, right, that you have in place, technology.

[00:21:59] So I tend to prioritize there.

[00:22:02] And then you move, I'd say, to the insights to say, OK, what is what is technology allowing us to see?

[00:22:08] And then you can fix some of the problems that you notice from the insights by adding a layer of experience, whether it's candidate, hiring manager or recruiter.

[00:22:18] You know, it doesn't matter.

[00:22:20] But but those were just like the three themes that emerged from all the things that I wanted to really talk about.

[00:22:25] So it makes it really easy to envision what you plan to do or what you'd like to do.

[00:22:31] So I just like that.

[00:22:33] I also like there is a lovely illustration where you are segmenting this work from sourcing to staging to segmenting the data and then the data that you want to get out of that and then how you're presenting that and to whom you're presenting the information.

[00:22:50] And I think it's really great to think about data on several different levels.

[00:22:55] I don't think that we have done a great job in TA of really understanding the weight of the data that we have.

[00:23:01] Yeah.

[00:23:02] I'd love for you to talk a little bit about how you thought this through.

[00:23:05] Yeah.

[00:23:06] So important.

[00:23:07] Right.

[00:23:07] The good thing and the bad thing about talent acquisition is we have so much data, an incredible amount of data.

[00:23:16] And there's two kinds of data.

[00:23:18] There's there's like operational data.

[00:23:21] It's like all the stuff that I mentioned, like it's exhaust.

[00:23:25] From from the recruiting process.

[00:23:27] It's operational data.

[00:23:28] And then you have, you know, this data that is really more like ad hoc.

[00:23:32] It's it's when you want to go in and you want to find something that's wrong.

[00:23:36] Like you you anecdotally know something's wrong.

[00:23:39] But you have to go in and like dig and pull things and figure out, like, you know, why didn't we fill our our store openings?

[00:23:46] You know, in store number 758.

[00:23:49] Why did we miss the mark?

[00:23:51] Right.

[00:23:51] Well, there was something downstream that happened.

[00:23:53] But let's go let's go pull it and look at it.

[00:23:55] So I think T.A. teams need to get good at both of those things.

[00:23:59] They need to to get good at like the dashboards and the reporting that is going to tell them on a day to day basis what's happening in the business or what happened.

[00:24:09] And then be able to do that like that, you know, that that more specific deep dive data.

[00:24:16] So that's really where, you know, what I write about is like, how do you how do you build the infrastructure with your business intelligence team?

[00:24:24] Telling them like what data they need to like pull for you, try to get it in one centralized place so that then you can extract, you know, the information that's most valuable for you.

[00:24:36] You think this is a skill set that is fully developed among T.A. leaders?

[00:24:42] Not at all.

[00:24:43] You know, the other thing that I I try to emphasize in the book is like you're not ever going to know all this stuff, even if you're like a rec ops person.

[00:24:51] And so there's a chapter in there.

[00:24:53] I think it's called rent, build, borrow or buy.

[00:24:56] I think is what it's called.

[00:24:57] And it's all about like, you know, having the you know, the ability as a T.A. leader to recognize when you're out of your depth and you need help.

[00:25:06] So I regularly use thought partners that I'll find on, you know, things like Upwork or, you know, I talk to tons of random people around the world that.

[00:25:21] I search and find sometimes I'll talk to three, four or five people on the same topic just to get multiple perspectives before I decide what I'm going to do.

[00:25:31] And it doesn't cost a lot like those conversations.

[00:25:34] Sometimes I pay people $30 or 40 bucks or something or whatever, you know, to have a 30 minute conversation.

[00:25:41] So we definitely don't have these skill sets.

[00:25:43] Some people do.

[00:25:44] I don't.

[00:25:45] But I have good people inside my company who I can tap.

[00:25:49] And there's great people outside the company that are willing to help.

[00:25:52] Hey, this is William Tenka, Work to Fun.

[00:25:55] Hey, listen, I'd like to talk to you a little bit about Inside the C-Suite, the podcast.

[00:25:59] It's a look into the journey of how one goes from high school, college, whatever, all the way to the C-Suite, all the ups and downs, failures, successes, all that stuff.

[00:26:09] Give it a listen.

[00:26:10] Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:26:12] Love that.

[00:26:13] Love that you're willing to admit.

[00:26:15] I don't have I don't bring everything to this.

[00:26:17] I bring some knowledge to this and I can go out and get the rest that I don't have.

[00:26:23] So I would love to hear a little bit more about and I just saw you at HR Tech and there are so many solutions that are available.

[00:26:33] But you make the claim that hiring is broken because our technology is broken.

[00:26:38] I'd love for you to expound on that and tell us why and how we might get to the place where we're able to address it.

[00:26:45] I think that's one of the reasons recruiting is broken.

[00:26:49] But, you know, I went I went to HR Tech for two reasons.

[00:26:54] This was the first time in a little while that I felt like there was just this huge shift happening.

[00:27:01] And of course, we know what that shift is.

[00:27:04] We don't even need to say it.

[00:27:06] It's AI.

[00:27:07] And I didn't go last year because I knew it was just going to be like hype.

[00:27:11] This year, I was hoping to see a little bit of substance.

[00:27:14] And next year, I want to see case studies.

[00:27:18] And so I spent a great deal of time just walking the floor, talking to technology vendors, trying to understand what they meant by AI, how they were leveraging it, how their customers were leveraging it.

[00:27:32] And then the other thing I was going very specifically to look for a couple of things.

[00:27:36] So like it was almost like a shopping trip as well.

[00:27:39] What did you learn?

[00:27:41] So we're a high volume shop, which means, you know, we do tens of thousands of maybe hundreds of thousands of interviews a year.

[00:27:48] And we're looking for some automation to help us with that, you know, the screening element of that to make our recruiters more efficient, to make our managers more efficient.

[00:27:59] So we were looking for some automation in the screening space.

[00:28:03] And so I learned that, you know, most of the screening is still pretty legacy based.

[00:28:09] And, you know, video interviewing, audio interviewing, it's still pretty legacy based.

[00:28:15] So there wasn't like a whole lot of like really cool tech around that.

[00:28:20] But that's OK.

[00:28:21] I think, you know, what we'll end up seeing in the future is probably people getting more comfortable with AI in the assessment space.

[00:28:33] Today, it's still kind of taboo.

[00:28:34] You don't want machines making decisions on your behalf.

[00:28:39] And that's understandable.

[00:28:41] And that wasn't what I was looking for.

[00:28:43] But I was kind of expecting to see some of that.

[00:28:45] And I didn't see a lot of it.

[00:28:47] So anyway, the other outcome, I think, of HR tech was and this is kind of getting to your question, which is why is it broken?

[00:28:54] It's because there's just so much there.

[00:28:57] Right.

[00:28:58] So, so much there.

[00:28:59] It was overwhelming.

[00:29:01] It was a great, great show.

[00:29:04] Completely overwhelming.

[00:29:05] And the other thing that's that I think is broken is every year when you go to that conference,

[00:29:13] whatever the hot thing is, like that's what you see when you look on everyone's banners.

[00:29:18] Right.

[00:29:19] Last year, it was like skills.

[00:29:21] This year, it's in AI.

[00:29:24] And so I think the, you know, the space tends to try to get out in front of it.

[00:29:30] And TA leaders buy into it.

[00:29:32] They get jaded because it doesn't say what, you know, it doesn't do what it says on the label.

[00:29:38] So then they blame the technology vendor.

[00:29:40] They don't re-up.

[00:29:41] And then there's just this cycle of this every, you know, every couple years.

[00:29:46] And so I tend to not be like an early adopter with TA tech.

[00:29:51] I'll wait a little bit.

[00:29:52] I'll let it play out.

[00:29:53] I'll wait for the, you know, some of my peers to do it.

[00:29:57] And then what I try to do is I try to do it better.

[00:29:59] You know, I try to do the adoption better.

[00:30:02] I try to do the execution of the software better to the point where the software vendors are coming to my team saying, how did you guys do this?

[00:30:13] You know, right.

[00:30:14] That's what we want to hear from our partners.

[00:30:16] And a big piece of this is integration, right?

[00:30:19] Yeah.

[00:30:19] A big piece is getting what you have to work with whatever new tool you're bringing on board.

[00:30:24] Otherwise, it's huge.

[00:30:25] Recruiters that you mentioned are just overwhelmed.

[00:30:27] So bringing them something new is not necessarily what they want.

[00:30:30] How do you, you talk a little bit in the book about demos and understanding new products.

[00:30:38] How do you structure demos?

[00:30:40] You say, structure your own demo.

[00:30:43] Yeah.

[00:30:44] Yeah.

[00:30:45] I don't know for sure, but I think software vendors don't love dealing with us because what we do is we've got a pretty structured way that we look at new tech.

[00:30:56] And I think it's, I have it in the book.

[00:30:58] I use, sometimes I use Trello.

[00:31:00] More recently, I've been using Smartsheet and just using like a Kanban approach and creating lanes whereby we have a consideration lane.

[00:31:09] So that's where we put things that we might have seen at HR tech.

[00:31:12] We're thinking about it, but we're not ready to like talk to them.

[00:31:15] Then our next step is an initial call where, you know, we'll reach out.

[00:31:19] We'll give them as much information as they need.

[00:31:21] We're going to capture some, some information just to make sure there's no deal breakers.

[00:31:25] And then the third step is what we call a structured demo.

[00:31:29] So we will actually send to the vendor.

[00:31:32] This is what we want you to present to us.

[00:31:35] We don't want to see like your marketing deck.

[00:31:38] We don't want to see you show us how you want us to see the platform.

[00:31:43] We want you to use our particular situation.

[00:31:46] And we were expecting you to design something for us.

[00:31:50] It doesn't necessarily, they don't need to code anything, but we just want them to talk our language, use, you know, our positions, like stuff like that.

[00:31:57] And if that goes well, we'll typically bring in.

[00:32:01] So that's a small team.

[00:32:02] My team.

[00:32:03] Then we'll bring in like our HR tech people to talk about integrations and data migration.

[00:32:09] We usually don't even talk about pricing until like much later in the process.

[00:32:14] I think we need to pay a lot more attention to how we do that, how we actually invest our money and also let the vendors know what's important to us.

[00:32:28] And I've had so many really poorly structured demos.

[00:32:32] I'm surprised there's so many dollars that are lost because the people that they're putting.

[00:32:38] Really on the most important piece of selling their product, generally are pretty junior and can't answer the questions we need them.

[00:32:46] So you're insistent that, you know, you get those answers.

[00:32:51] It's so important.

[00:32:52] What you just said there, it's just, it's so critical.

[00:32:54] Like I overshare with them.

[00:32:56] I'll send them my tech stack.

[00:32:58] I'll send them what we're using, how many applicants we get.

[00:33:01] Like they need to know that in order for them to present something to us.

[00:33:06] Otherwise, you're right.

[00:33:07] Like you get an SDR or, you know, sales development rep or a junior account executive.

[00:33:13] So we do tend to kind of ask for, hey, give us a senior person.

[00:33:18] And we also want someone that does like your config, like a customer success person on that call as well.

[00:33:26] Because sales reps typically cannot answer our questions.

[00:33:29] We're quickly running through time, but I do want to talk a little bit about your priority pyramid.

[00:33:35] So you create this pyramid and you talk about strategy, infrastructure, operations, innovation, and excellence.

[00:33:43] And I'd love for you to sort of walk through why this pyramid is important and how you've actually leveraged it to get to some successful projects.

[00:33:52] So for a talent acquisition leader, this is where I spend a lot of my time is really thinking critically about what should we be working on.

[00:34:00] Because there's so much that we can be working on on a daily basis.

[00:34:05] Like they're, you know, even in a highly optimized function, I feel like our functions doing pretty well.

[00:34:11] We're pretty stable.

[00:34:12] But I could rattle off like 50 things right now that I would love to do.

[00:34:16] And that's where you get in trouble as a TA leader.

[00:34:19] And so that strategy foundation is so important to have the strategy, to know the direction and the key things that the business needs from you and the key things that you think your function needs.

[00:34:32] So for example, if I know that my ATS is just not built for the future, that's part of my strategy.

[00:34:38] It's part of my tech strategy.

[00:34:39] I'm going to remove it.

[00:34:40] I'm going to put a new one in, right?

[00:34:42] And that's where that infrastructure comes into play is do I have the right tech?

[00:34:46] Am I structured the right way?

[00:34:49] As a team, is my compliance in order?

[00:34:52] For example, like that's at the base of the Maslow's hierarchy, right?

[00:34:58] Strategy, infrastructure.

[00:34:59] And then you start thinking about these other things, right?

[00:35:02] Once you have your base built, you can begin thinking about candidate experience, for example, or hiring processes and things like that.

[00:35:11] And then the very top of the pyramid, as you mentioned, is like going out and speaking about these things or writing a blog post or trying to do something new and more innovative.

[00:35:23] You know, I think a lot of TA leaders or functions, they skip the foundational stuff and they want to go right to the innovative, shiny new toy when they haven't built the foundation to begin with.

[00:35:35] It's missing.

[00:35:37] It creates this really bad cycle of always having to have the next thing when you haven't taken care of your own porch.

[00:35:46] The basis.

[00:35:47] Yeah.

[00:35:47] That's fantastic.

[00:35:48] I love that.

[00:35:49] I will stop us there because that's a great place to stop.

[00:35:53] But I reserve the right with my book authors to come back and have a second conversation.

[00:36:00] Again, I am just thrilled that you've written about this topic.

[00:36:05] I guess my question for you, do you plan on writing any more or another book?

[00:36:10] I wrote this book entirely by accident.

[00:36:14] Probably the least likely person to have written a book.

[00:36:16] And it's, as you know, very difficult, you know, to write a book.

[00:36:21] So I don't.

[00:36:22] It's the time.

[00:36:23] It is very time intensive.

[00:36:25] And the amount of mental clarity that you have to have to go 250 pages on a single topic, telling stories and making it all fit together, just incredibly taxing.

[00:36:39] But I recommend that anybody tries it because it has done so much for me and my ability to execute in my own function today that I, you know, I would go back and do it again.

[00:36:53] I don't know that I would write another book yet.

[00:36:57] Because one of the things with this book was I wrote it because it hadn't been written.

[00:37:02] Right.

[00:37:02] And really hadn't.

[00:37:04] Yeah.

[00:37:04] And so I don't know something else yet that hasn't been written, but if I stumble upon it, I might.

[00:37:10] You've built out a community, the recops.org community.

[00:37:14] Yeah.

[00:37:14] So we're going to be launching a more formal community for recops practitioners and heads of talent acquisition where they can kind of help each other.

[00:37:25] So that'll be an online community that's, you know, that should be launching probably in the new year, realistically.

[00:37:30] Right.

[00:37:32] And then I'll be inside there will be also be a pretty nice lengthy cohort based course for TA leaders who want to learn more about how to execute the recops framework.

[00:37:46] Yeah.

[00:37:47] Love that.

[00:37:47] So you can start by going to recops.org and plug your email address in there and we'll definitely notify you when things are ready.

[00:37:56] Fantastic.

[00:37:57] Well, I want to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk to me about the work that you've done, the thinking that you've done, the book that you've written.

[00:38:05] It's called Recruiting Operations and then a subtitle, Recruiting is Still Broken, Here's How to Fix It.

[00:38:13] James Calino, thank you so much for appearing on the show and I wish you much success as you go about your next recops project.

[00:38:21] I appreciate being on, Carmen.

[00:38:24] Thanks so much for the invite and happy to come on again anytime you need.

[00:38:27] Absolutely.

[00:38:28] Great.

[00:38:29] Thank you.