from the crossroads of America in the hooer state of Indiana this is get in the podcast focus on the unfolding stories and extraordinary Innovations happening right now in the Heartland I'm Matt hunkler CEO at powderkeg and I'll will be one of your host for today's conversation I am joined in Studio by Nate spangle head of community at powder yes sir on the show today is Haron schaer owner and chief Visionary officer at exact tire I think the Hidden Gem in Indiana is is it's a it's a very entrepreneurial state but no one thinks of it as an entrepreneurial state but it is Walt Disney once
said You Can Dream create design and build the most wonderful place in the world but it requires people to make that dream a reality and today on the show we're going to talk about finding the right people to help make your dream a reality harand has over 40 years of experience in human resources and business management he has over 30 years of experience in the peo space and is a true thought leader when it comes to the world of talent acquisition today we're going to Deep dive into everything you need to know about Talent attraction and hiring because Steve Jobs famously once said I consider
recruiting the most important job of someone like myself and if Steve wasn't above it none of us are so let's dive in Haron welcome to the show thank you I'm excited to be here awesome to have you here um before we dive deep in can you just give us a little context of how you became an expert of talent acquisition and hiring um I started a I've I've been in the HR space um um since I started my first company and uh one of the companies I started in 2007 was a space that's built applicant tracking and onboarding software and now we actually do uh
let companies Outsource the hiring um process to us so I would summarize it to say if you built if you wanted to build your own internal hiring team you could do it and it' be crackerjack and be wonderful most people don't want to do it it's expensive and it's very distracting to their business we let them Outsource that for a fixed fee we're not recruiters no charge of percentage people are loving it and it's it's on fire right now so it's cool give us an idea of the scale I know you work with a lot of companies from startups to Big Enterprises that give us
a little bit of a context of of What kinds of companies you help and where you've been over the last four four Decades of doing this yeah in the hiring space and the that company's called exact tire that company um helps companies at all at all different levels and and if you think about companies some of them are small like you said startups they don't have a team yeah so they can get some software but then they don't even really know how to use it effectively or efficiently and our we everybody on our team that helps that works face Toof face with clients are Sherm
certified it's one of my requirement so we're the only one we know of there says everybody Sherm certified Sherm being the Society of human Resource Management they have to take a test they have to give have so many credits a year to stay keep their licenses um current so these people know what's going on it's not just somebody um everybody's sourced here in the US I mean those kinds of things that you look at but then larger companies they're looking for the software they have people that have used it before they're familiar with the experience now they're looking for features and benefits but also here
again you know they don't do it every single day they don't use our software and it lets it lets them use those shm certified people to go all right I'm confused what do I do here what can I do here what can I do better here we'll talk a little bit about what you can do better here in a minute that's going to be very key yeah I think before we get into the blocking and tackling of how to be an expert when it comes to hiring so we kind of started in 2007 but you have four Decades of experience in the HR space in
the peo space I know can we kind of go back to the beginning kind of give us some building blocks on how you became a a true thought leader true expert when it comes to hiring well way back in the beginning I was silly enough to think that I was going to start a company that was the that had never been started in state of Indiana so I have two companies today a peo and this other company xaar both of them my first poo started in '92 left a company here in for those who might not know what is a peo it's a professional employer
organization so you go into a companies and let them Outsource most of the HR function um to you we have that company has clients as small as two and as high as 500 in 1992 there were no other peos in Indiana zero okay so what what got you excited to start that and how did that process kind of go I got introduced to it while I was working for another company in town and I thought everyone should have this is amazing I mean and everybody has this problem this is revolutionary so it was in many other states but it wasn't in Indiana what I missed
was the fact that if if you're the first person doing it you're not a salesperson you're an evangelist right and unfortunately it took a little longer than it did but that that company was did really well I exited that sold it to a small public company ran that I was the COO of that public company for a while left there and then um I started exact tire at that point and then um two years later HCC was the peo company I back went back in that business again let's talk a little bit about the current landscape um of talent and obviously we've got a lot
of people who listen to the show who are in Tech Innovation driven businesses what are some of the trends that you're seeing right now in kind of the um I guess do people still use the term white color in those kind of White Collar drops obviously Nate's not even wearing a collar so like we don't oh yeah plaid collar call start up I think hiring has drastically changed and I the hiring the whole Talent acquisition not hiring let me drop that term the talent acquisition process has changed and I don't think it's ever going back and the reason I say that is because if you
look at the statistics of the number of people who have entering the work Force right I mean somebody had to be thinking about this 18 years ago you know that person was going to enter the workforce and the numbers that are exiting the workforce the numbers are out of whack and they've been out of whack for a while and they're not going to change any more people are leaving the workforce than joining exactly so there's going to be right there's more people leaving the workforce and retiring Co Amplified that some because then people decided to step out I mean even though they were age appropriate
to work they stepped out of the workforce because they went wait a minute I this is doesn't work for me whatever it is I'm going to start my own business or try whatever so those numbers went down yet again you look at immigration numbers went down again there's a lot of pressure those aren't changing so now supply and demand has changed and when supply and demand changes you then have to look at it and say okay what what am I going to do differently than I did before because we all know that stupid enough phrase of you know keep doing the same thing expect different
results Sandy it is I mean so you have to approach it differently and if you put hiring and talent quisition aside in any other part of your business you would say these things have changed this isn't working I need to fix something right in Talent acquisition everybody keeps doing what they've been doing and it's not working and so it's really interesting and we're we're pushing that concept pretty there's a lot of people pushing it but we're pushing it too can you give a few examples of of those repetitive things and and old traditional things that people are still doing that haven't changed so I just
did a um a webinar if you want to see it at 30 minutes it's um about hiring and talent acquisition go to our website exact hired uh.com go to Full Service hiring and you'll see a page and there'll be a link to it anyway the very first thing is I had three keys to three keys of success in the hiring process in the talent acquisition process and one was treat it like a marketing experience that's huge so if you think about it as a marketing experience I did a speech down in Tennessee and I said um how many of you have Rewritten your job ads
and made them flashy and made them salesy and made them exciting nobody raised their hand a bunch of HR people in the in the room I said okay the very first thing you're going to do is you're going to take your ad go over to your marketing department who writes flashy sexy ads trying to get people to buy your product and tell them to rewrite it for you they're like that's cool so if you think about it as a marketing experience it changes the dynamic the way you approach this and the way you attack it as opposed to here's the job I'm going to give
you all the all the you know you're going to do this and do this and do this and it it's kind of boring and then when you overlay the fact that the supply and demand's out of whack so what does that mean it means that the person the the candidate has lots of options M so if they're getting bored reading any of your stuff what are they going to do click off and go somewhere else and you lose those people but you don't know you lost them they were gone before you got to see them yeah it wasn't like you interviewed them and had them
at the last day you know had them at the end of the equation and then they decided to go somewhere else else you never saw them I mean you touched on a big Trend there which is a lot of remote work uh you mentioned clicking some people are not even getting face Toof face in the hiring process anymore and getting hired uh purely through screens right how has the remote work Trend shifted how hiring is happening the biggest thing is it is open the job pool for all of us MH if you can handle remote work and most companies not all can it gives you
a bigger pull to pull from that's the good news yep the bad news is there's not a lot of managers who ever trained to manage remote work and they're struggling with it right now and I think you're going to see remote work if you don't do what I think which is my favorite one is to do a hybrid method because people weren't meant to be isolated and and and it causes issues yeah and and then if you don't know how to manage it on top of it I mean look at me I'm not a youngster my tool my tool kit for managing I learned through
the years none of it was how to remote how to manage somebody who was working in their kitchen seven days five days a week you know it wasn't about setting your your slack Emoji to whatever you were up to these days that wasn't part of uh you getting in the workforce exactly yeah exactly so I I I I like remote work I think it I think it makes tons of sense when you think about the demands on people's time and how complicated it's been or if if you're in a major city where a normal commute is one to two hours and without an accident right
it makes tons of sense but you also have to remember that this person isn't um isn't going through the normal process that they did before and I won't beat this to death but I'll mention one how do we learn it might be something where you teach me and it might be you and I are working in the same place and and I'm picking it up cuz you're going through a thing and I'm listening and I'm learning while you're while you're learning the same thing or you go hey this just happened well if you're in your house and you're and I'm in my house you're not
calling me up to tell me this just happened it doesn't happen that learning goes away out the window it seems to me too that um you've got a bigger pool to pull from but you're also as an employer your competition pool has also opened up you're competing with every other company that's hiring remotely right right when you kind of think about the competitive Advantage there that you could potentially invest in that is that kind of what employer brand is that is a really really good question because if we were looking we're sitting in Indianapolis right now and you'd say well I know the companies in
Indianapolis but now I'm now to your point I'm applying for jobs with companies that are based in Kansas I don't know them so I I don't know if they're good companies or not so branding is important because you don't know who's looking at you and you don't know how they're going to make their decision as to whether they step off the curb and fill like out your application or engage with you or feel comfortable if there's a competition between three companies why pick yours and not pick Nate's company yeah you know I think that goes hand inand with you the first tip right was it's
a marketing thing right this whole hiring process has got to be marketing that's like the when you just boil it down like when I think about employer branding it's it's a marketing play so what do you see other than right take your job descriptions to your marketing team what other ways do you see companies uh leveraging building strong employer Brands to to win that right when you're down to the last three companies it's a digital remote experience how do you see companies winning that I'm going to give you lots of points but I'm going to just I'm I'm going to pull two more things from
that webinar because I think it works the second thing was U meet the market where it is today and the third thing is humanize the process of hiring and and and so I'm going to use that last one to answer your question is is that if you think about if social media is powerful and you can build brand but your brand can get damaged on social media too so think people think well I looked at Nate's resumee but I wasn't that excited about it so I'm just I'm going to not going to do anything so Nate's frustrated because nobody connected with him even to tell
him no so now all of a sudden he starts trashing that company so somebody starts looking for a job three months later different job different person and they're reading these reviews going why would I go to work for this company they didn't humanize the process they didn't treat me like a human mhm even No No's okay okay it's just but treat me like I want to be treated the interesting thing is Nate you might be you might be the perfect candidate for a job I'm going to have 6 months from now are you going to ever apply at my company again absolutely not that's humanizing
the process yeah I thought they hear a success story right like you I mean you've done this for again I'm going to reiterate a lot of years you were an expert when it comes to this um but in the last you know three let's say post 2019 do you have any really good success stories of companies that you know of that have done a great job of humanizing the process building a strong employer brand leveraging social media to even if it's not like get the higher but like create a really good talent attraction system I don't know if one particular company comes to mind and
I I should have I should be have been more prepared to to to bring that to the table but I will think the ones that look at the process and break it down you'll hear owners say if they want to work for me they'll fill out that application right or they or they want to work for me they'll put up with this process the process of whatever it is and it might just be how long it takes to fill it out how how long it takes to get somebody to call you or to text you or to set up an appointment or to whatever all
those things are are distraction what I call it is the friction of the hiring of hiring or friction of talent acquisition you need to reduce it because otherwise you're going to go to where where there's less friction because we as owners need to reme to know that this is it used to be an employer experience and now it's a candidate it's a c driven experience they're running the show we may not like it and it isn't going to change but it's the way it is I'd love to dive one layer deeper into that as I think about you know watching uh movies and hearing about
like you show up at a Fortune 500 the Google campus right in 2011 there's kombucha on tap they have a maid they have a cook whatever Chef all that crazy stuff and you have you're you have that wow factor like as a candidate you walk in there for your job interview and you're like holy cow this is sweet do you have any examples or do you know any companies that are using digital tools using social media to still provide that wow experience that like would make someone feel like when they walk into to that Google campus for the first time what you want to see
as a human being not a company but but the particulars what you want to do is you want to see yourself in in whatever image that company is throwing back at you mhm so if if you if you want if you want to see a company that's giving back that's treating its employers employees in a certain way whether those are events or whether it's giving back to a community or or just how the first day looks you know or more maybe even more importantly how does dayga -10 look 10 days before you came to work for me what did what do we do and people
will read these stories and start to say this is a company I want to go to work for if you have really cool facilities like Google and you want to play that off too I I don't know that that's selling I don't think that's closing the deal anymore wait so culture is not ping pong tables what exactly that's news to me I don't think so I I've actually got this quote here from a Google co-founder Eric Schmidt he uh he once said scouting is like shaving if you don't do it every day it shows right so when a company like Google is that intentional about
going and scouting Talent not just saying hey we're Google people are going to come and the best people are just going to find us right Eric SCH is literally saying scouting right is is one of the most important things because if you don't do it it it shows yeah you experience it so let's talk a little bit about creating a strategy for talent attraction I think you have to do it all the time I think it has to be inbred in your company yeah so you can call it it's an overused term but you can call it culture you can call it whatever you want
but you have to create an environment where people really love being there they have to work cuz they have to pay their bills if you said you want to work or stay home they're going to stay home if if you get if you pay them right but they have to work so if you're going to have to work it's a big part of your day why not make that the best experience it can be and treat them like a human being they see that as employees you get to promote that as a company you get to speak to that you get to say like in
our company we don't have any turnover I can say I have a great company I can say I have great culture but if I say I don't have any turnover people like what you don't have any turnover how how can that be it speaks to really what I'm trying to say without saying it mhm M I have great culture cuz nobody wants to leave and I don't want them to leave you know that kind of thing so I do think it's an important scouting part is I'm always looking for next the next people and to hire and so are my staff MH they're looking for
somebody going hey when we're ready to hire we need to talk to this person I'm going to get them to apply do you have like a system for keeping track of those people so like you you talk to someone you're like wow that was a cool interaction we're not hiring someone like that right now but it's informal but yes we we we do cuz we're not hiring at the level of a Google you'd have to formalize that one but I mean if you're going to hire three or four or five people a year it's pretty easy to keep a little a little spread a little
spreadsheet on it or something I think that's important for and candidates out there like they're if you're looking to get into a company and they're ah they're not hiring for anyone right now it's not worth my time to reach out and it's like no hold on the best CEOs that have the best culture are always building this bench are always building that that pipeline cuz 3 months six months a year down the road they're going to remember that great conversation they like oh you know Matt would be the perfect person for this job that's really true on the candidate side if you really wanted into
a company that was hard to get into I think you were going to go start down that line reaching out and looking different than the candidate who goes oh here's my resume and then we'll have a thing is say hey I've looked at this I've looked at your website I've talked to some of your employees I'd love to come to work for you and you have an opportunity if I as an owner I would go I don't think I've ever seen that happen yeah I mean it would write it would it would it would boost that person into um to where they are the other
thing is hiring for fit is huge people think oh well we need somebody to do payroll you know whatever right you got a payroll experience my theory is can I teach you payroll yeah I can teach you payroll yeah can I teach you what your parents were supposed to do no I can't so if you come to me with the right DNA I can train you in one of those and not the other so I have to make sure that you fit into that into whatever my culture is they're not all the same they're all different who fits in my in one of my companies
might not fit in another but it's important because they'll feel like I said in going back to that thing about the picture of seeing yourself in the image of that company you're like that's I want to work for a company like that versus that so it's important and so scouting is always important because you've heard of people like hey I went to the car dealership and the person that worked on it on my that worked on my car that was a service tech was awesome so I was like you want a job you know you don't have a car dealership you got to some but
you're hiring for fit yep and when you think about where you could find this Talent kind of seems like the options are Limitless you could be on LinkedIn you could be in cold email land you could be going to networking events you could be going to Virtual events what are some of the best channels today that people are using to find this talent and and what's actually working the single best source of of of candidates are your employees every everyone should pay some kind of a fee that's just being respectful if your employees really love working for you they're not going to let anybody into
the house they're not inviting anybody to Thanksgiving that they don't like right and that's that's kind of my our Theory you know don't don't bring you know whatever we're going to pay you who cares but you're going have to work with this person yeah so I think that's your number one source it's not the one that can scale if you're trying to go from 10 to 100 doesn't work sure but if you're going to hire at a at a at a at a pace that's slower than that it is our number one resource is referrals we do all the advertising and we're you know but
but our employees will tell we'll call their friends and go we just posted a job you need you're a perfect F fit for it you need to apply and they have a referral bonus if they get hired absolutely what's a reasonable referral bonus I've seen every number from hundreds which I think is way too low to thousands I do think it's I do think there's a couple things I think it has to be meaningful so if you're going to give somebody 100 or 200 I don't know that they care enough to take any action honestly they shouldn't care if it's 2,000 they should do it
because not the for the economics they should do it because they because they're you're saying thank you thank you for paying attention and stepping off the curb and telling your friend to do it you could have not done that yeah right so there's just a way to say thank you a lot of people will like well they have to stay a year before you give them the money like I I'm not a big fan of that I don't want to give it to them the day the person walks in either so you kind of I think Stage IT M hey we'll give you half of
it or 34 or 50 40 30% of it when they come and 30% when they're here X and Y and whatever so do you think that there's a correlation between the amount of your referral bonus and the quality of your refer referred candidates so let me let me dive into how I just thought about that as you were speaking if you're going to give me $100 to refer a uh a candidate I'm like H am I am I am I that incentivized if it goes well if it does go well I'm like I'm just going to toss people in that pipeline if I know that
my boss is going to pay me $5,000 for a candidate I am dang sure going to refer a good quality candidate cuz I know that it's meaningful right you think that there's a the correlation there I think I don't think money's the motivator I really don't I think it's because they they they like working there they want it they they my people would say to me this is the best place I've ever worked in my life I'm not going anywhere else they don't want to screw it up they don't want to see our company fail and then go oh I got go to work for
somebody else who won't treat me this way so I don't think there's a correlation there's there is probably an Avenue where I can just find five people who really aren't all that good and you're going to give me five grand and maybe I'll get half of it cuz the person's going to leave after 7 months that goes back to the core culture is wrong and the fits wrong and and the numbers are wrong but you know I don't think it's a Money Motivated thing I think it's a invite me if I'm am I going to invite this person to Thanksgiving thing I love if you
have to grow your team fast and you're not going to grow from referrals yeah and you've got to find a way to go outbound what are the best strategies today is it job boards is it outbound email LinkedIn all of the above I think linkedin's powerful I think it but I do think indeed runs a show I mean they're they own the market um and and you if most of the people that's one of the job sites they'll be on so everyone's going to look it indeed linkedin's pretty powerful as well Zi recr as well you know there's where you can step off the competition
race a little bit is find some smaller job boards maybe that aren't as populated like an indeed where you might and there would be Specialties so if you're looking for you know truck drivers or if you looking for um you know certain salespeople in a in a medical capacity there might be some job board where those people uh surv we're we're hanging out if you will right y whether it's associations or whether it's going to you know it's you there's what I call hand toand combat it's like I'm going to go to an after I'm going to go to a powder cake after you know
you know after market or I mean an evening event and I'm going to look for you know I'm gonna that's hand toand combat it doesn't scale fast you know yep but what does scale fast is telling all telling everybody you know you're looking and linkedin's a good tool for that and so is joining you know organizations like powder cake or or everybody you know in pwder cake and saying hey I'm looking I'm looking I'm looking the more people you tell you know the the more people hear it I love that tip for like a niche job board you know because I feel like the thing
with like LinkedIn one click apply is you can put it out there and you're going to get volume and volume it's like being on the other side of that it's like you have a 100 oneclick applications to look through they're all start like looking pretty similar on there right so that's a great tip yeah how does Talent acquisition differ at startups versus large Enterprises usually the thing that a big company can offer is clearly they probably have more money for pay they probably have better better benefits where where I've seen startups work and if I was starting another one and I was looking for people
yeah I'd be talking about impact you could have on the organization we've all heard that how much fun you can have if if you're a young person I have two boys I've always told them you know don't try to figure out how to make the most money find something you love doing then figure out how to make money doing it right so if you can go into a startup and learn how that works no one can take that away from you you know they can't take education away from you they can't take experience away from you so you're getting experience so I'd be saying to
them you can go there and three years later you'll be doing kind of the same thing maybe get a promotion you make more money you'll have better benefits but in the startup world what you're going to learn is you're going to see everything because there's only three of us if pipe breaks two of us are going to be fixing this pipe tomorrow you know right absolutely that that's that's great advice and and to be able to kind of share that uh as a startup makes a lot of sense you're going to make a real impact you're going to gain real skills as we get successful
you'll be successful too the other part is you can sit around a table like this throw out a great idea and execute it tomorrow in a big company there's that doesn't usually work like that yeah yeah that's right you know that's right we all know that but we forget it so if you were selling a startup that's how I'd be doing it yeah Nate's got some questions about hiring process because his hiring process was hey I've been watching you on LinkedIn here for about year you want to grab a cup of coffee yeah and it's just so funny I like put myself back in the
shoes before I joined Peg and I was like I cannot imagine going to a company that like I'm not eligible for this promotion until it's like you just like look at the person up the hiring CH that's what I'm going to be in 25 years I'm cool I'm cool with that I'm cool with that I'm going to go the startup route but talking about these big companies right then they are good at they are good at acquiring top talent uh we have a quote that we're looking at for Mr Mark Benny off of Salesforce so acquiring the right Talent is the most important key to
growth hiring was and still is the most important thing we do so as we think about optimizing that recruitment process what key elements should organizations focus on to optimize the process from Soup To Nuts right reduce the friction because you can throw everything in that bucket if you really want you can force everything in that bucket if you wanted to probably doesn't not the right way but you could so reduce the friction could be how long long does it take me to read the ad is the ad ex sexy and now I have now I go to the application does it have 80 questions on
it do you really need to do you really need to have 80 things to fill out to decide if you're going to hire somebody so I say to somebody if I walked into your office today and I said I want to come to work for you what questions would you ask me no one's filling anything out we're sitting at a table what questions would you ask me and they say well I have three questions and I go like okay then why isn't that your application maybe get it the five or six I get it but okay you know do you have a license or Dr
whatever whatever it is it every step of the way try to reduce that that friction of the hiring process from how long did it take you to get back to me you know do I understand do I understand what the next step is going to be how can technology or AI be used to help reduce that friction um it's inlux right now sure it can do it by by using keywords and information and searching and saying you were looking for somebody who is a an accountant and I looked at all these I looked at this and I can tell you these people have account in
their information or the because it's going to look up the resume or history in some way what you need to make sure of that there's there's a lot of Articles out there right now about about is there any bias in this automation at all you got to make sure there's not because it's a great way to get sued you know there's a great way to get sued if you know if you have bias and you're using people too AI is I I just plugged it in and I did this and and this came out so you got to make sure that it's not excluding people
that can be a little bit dangerous but nonetheless I think think we if you have a lot of volume it makes a ton of sense you know so talking about bias there as one common mistake that that employers can make are there two or three other like common mistakes that people make with their talent attraction recruitment process making sure that that that I'm I'm I'm being responsive to you even if even I'm going to tell you no or even if I want to tell you yes we have clients that you we do this and we watch them and go like you know you got it
you got applicants and you didn't contact them for two days you realize that's like that's a big deal you know this is be measured in seconds and minutes not you know days and weeks like I didn't know that I you know I thought it was okay and and so that's that's a a very important one the other one is is that I'd say this two different ways one is do you really understand why your top performers are your top performers M oh so I have a salesperson who's a top performer why cuz they sell a lot obviously why are they a top why are they
a top performer you know what characteristics are you trying to find because it's not that easy to figure that out so that's that's one thing the other one is is I going back to that they call it skill-based hiring is is looking at it and saying I'm hiring for the skill set not the experience if I got the experience okay great but I want skill set I want somebody who's going to be good with customers who's going to be patient who's going to be accommodating who isn't going to who doesn't have the personality of a running chainsaw you know that kind of stuff that's what
those things are important because what does a c what does a customer want they want to be treated with respect and they want to be treated like the other person on the other end of the they want under a person at the other end of the phone to say to be caring enough to listen so those things so that skill base is important say can I teach you my job probably yeah I almost all jobs not not all of them but a lot of them but that's skill-based stuff that's I'm a bumper sticker guy right I mean like that's that's what your parents are supposed
to do you come to me I can't undo that I can't fix it how do you assess those soft skills or the cultural fit are there questions that you have that you ask or ways you can uncover that throughout the the interview process especially if it's it's Zoom like yeah remote hybrid work three Zoom meetings how can you really tell the soft skills and the cultural fit there's a couple ways I've seen it work one is um you can do a assessments and they're very accurate we sell we sell an assessment there's tons of other assessments so I'm not pushing ours our is great but
you know it'll tell you that that that what that per what that person is but more importantly you need to understand okay this is how this is I assessed Matt I got it but I what I'm really trying to do is get another Nate I got to figure out why Nate isn't is significant in those traits so I can match you up and try to see do I have any fit right the other one is is that you need to ask you need to as a as a interviewer you need to obviously everybody's seen this in all the Articles you got to talk less listen
more but you got to ask more open-ended questions and you got to ask tough questions like you know tell me a time whatever you whatever you're looking for and you you know what are what are three great interview questions that are not common I would try to find like tell me something tell me a time that you failed and tell me how you handled it and you know how how did you handle the failure how did you explain it to your boss what did you learn from it one of my favorite interview questions is I I call it the story I want to know your
story I want to know where you grew up I want to know what your parents did I want to know what you're what you saw not not that oh if my parents were hardworking that means I'm hardworking there is a lot of correlation but there's no guarantee you could you could be not that or the other way around sure but it but it does give you some insight to start to ask more questions and so I like that and the and the other one could be you know what was the most significant thing you ever learned from work or um when when did your boss
give you an unreasonable deadline and how did you negotiate with them you'd looking for a story that tells you something into the character of that person that isn't just well you worked here you did this you know tell me what your job was and tell me what your skills were was like when you failed a guy in town you know we D fail Fest if you remember that right sure and I thought who's going to do a program on fail Fest is this crazy and I went to it and I thought this might might be the coolest thing I've ever been in my life yeah
people getting up and explaining what didn't work and what they learned from it is monstrous and it you're the willingness to be comfortable enough to explain that gives you a view into that person a little bit I just have one more question as we think through um the recruitment process we talked about bias I think diversity is is super key and especially maybe pushing back a little bit when when you recruit from your personal Network you recruit from your employees or personal Network everything kind of looks the same and people have similar circles how do you build a culture of diversity uh in the recruitment
process I would say that and I don't think we do a great job of it I mean it's embarrassing we're an HR company and I'm like saying I don't think we're very good at this because I think you have to look in places that you don't normally look right so if if all of a sudden you're saying I need more color or I need more um gender diversity or I need more color diversity or whatever or age diversity whatever it would be you have to consciously think where are these people hanging out and I have to go after them in a way that I wouldn't
go after them differently and I don't want to I don't want to try it would take too long I end up in down a rabbit hole but but I do think you just think about that where would these kind of where would this kind of diversity not hang out and and I should go try that as we see opportunities as we see that supply and demand thing you tighten up I think people get are have been getting and are going to continue to get more creative I mean we have a lot of clients so when we sit down with them and said what's your number
one issue well 10 years ago it was like oh sales is my number one issue cash is my number one issue talent talent talent talent talent every one of them because they realize that unless we're in a market where there's no competition the brochures all look alike the only differentiator is C is the customer experience y yeah and that that comes from what comes from know people culture you know feeling like you know what I do here matters and so I'm going to I'm going to make it good I can't remember which website it's on so it's on the HC website is how I treat
my employees so I I either came up with this one or I stole it somewhere I can't remember where I stole it I don't remember how I treat my employees is how they'll treat my customer yeah so the C my employees are the high of my pyramid you everybody's seen some version of that but it really works because you don't have any customers you know if our company does well it's because our employees did their jobs and really knocked the ball out of the park not because of me I love that last question before the lightning round yeah um and you may have touched on
some of these already but just to summarize what are the three biggest Trends in hiring right now that you think people really need to be paying attention to I think probably the the biggest one is UN is that supply and demand in the friction equation is it if you try to do what you did before if you don't change the friction equation you're going to you're going to continue to get less disappointing results and you're not going to understand why I also think the one of the biggest Trends is is that in my era people had a had an idea that they were going to
work somewhere for a long period of time so I think in the hiring you need to measure that a little bit you can't force somebody to say well are are you going to work for me for 8 years or 7 years or 3 years I mean they're going to always tell you whatever they're going to tell you but the point is you you have to understand what motivates that person and think can I can I keep them motivated because if you can't you're going to train them for a year mhm then they're going to be there one more year and you're going to get to
do it all over again which is painfully expensive so I do think that that that's part of it the other trend is that if I'm young and I'm and I and I have and I need to learn I want to learn it's part of it's part of the world and now I'm in a remote work for oh Matt you're great okay great so you're going to work from your house and like how do I keep how do I get how do I build culture when I don't even when when no one's even showing up in the office or they're showing up one or two days
a week how do I do that how do I connect that how do I glue that together that trend is going to have a huge impact you're going to see a lot more turnover culture being damaged you're going to see isolation you're going to see depression all those things are going to show up because people are going like you I'm here by myself or I'm in a big city and my apartment is 800 square feet I can't even turn around I bump into myself you know I mean right or or seriously I have a one I have a studio apartment so I'm sleeping here and
I'm working you know half a foot away from where I sleep I mean that's weird but it's happening if people want to get some help from experts like yourselves yourself and the team exact hire what's the next step that they should do to like learn more in the hiring space an exact hire experience they they would they would come and just talk to one of our people and whether they use our service or they just steal our IDs into it themselves it's okay it's it's okay there's enough there's enough opportunities out there right so but it's very important for people to learn in that we
go you could hire a consultant even at my other company in the HR space we have consultants and people sit down and dissect it there's a lot of great Consultants out there you know we're not in the market all by ourselves of course you have to be a constant learner we all have seen that the rate of change is staggering you know you think you know something and then a year later you like question whether you know it or not and you're like how did that happen so fast I mean it was like a blinked it's it's speeding up yeah but everybody else is doing
it too the other your candidates are your employees are your customers are everybody is so you have no choice you either stay up stay try to stay up try to maybe even Excel or you get just walked over by some competitor who's smarter faster and cooler than you are I mean maybe I didn't answer the question exactly but yeah I think that's great that the fact that you have people on on the team that can just share best practices answer questions um and be there to take the next step if if people are ready yeah when you have lots of clients you see lots of
things you you get pulled into them you weren't you you didn't make this stuff up I mean they pulls you into it and you're like I didn't see that one coming and then you have to work through it obviously they're trying to educate themselves and be smarter of course but but life experience is invaluable I mean you know well thank thank you for this master class on hiring Talent acquisition uh having a strategy for growing the team it is obviously super important we shared some quotes uh today from some famous entrepreneurs and um you gave us some really good Insight so I really appreciate it
well the thank you's to you cuz I feel honored you asked me I I mean that sincerely so thank you very much ABS I had a ball you're not out of the out of the woods you're not done yet yet favorite part we've got three final questions for the lightning round today we're fast quick first thing that comes to the top of your head no wrong answers unless it's a wrong answer so outside of the amazing entrepreneurial ecosystem what is Indiana known for I grew up in Florida and then Texas was a little stop over and came here I would tell you I would have
never moved to Indiana but I got transferred with a company and they moved me here to work at one of their divisions I love this place I mean I think for me I it's it's just the F the PE people are very open you can get to anybody in this in this state I mean if you would decide I want I want I don't know the governor I want to talk to the governor you can you can get there you know try to do that in Texas where I live for a while ain't happening I I also think that people are willing to give you
a chance I also think that people are willing to try to legitimately help you and listen to your story and even share their stories successes and not it's very easy to get connected here if you put your mind to it if you work hard at it it's easy to build a network now networks like plants you got to water them and feed them cuz they'll they'll die obviously but but it's but it's easy to call somebody meet somebody you know I've gone a lot of your powder cake events are just amazing and you just bump into somebody go can we have coffee oh yeah you're
like he doesn't even know me or she doesn't even know me but they said yes that I love Indiana I love Indiana Great yes sir yeah what is a hidden Jam in Indiana I don't think I would have started this business in some of the other states I don't think I knew that when I started in Indiana I think I went into it ignorantly and just learned it you know kind of look back at it and got it in the rear mirror the Hidden Gem is the state is really um it it focuses a lot on this isn't just about how much Venture Capital Money
there is this is not the number one state for Venture Capital money we already know that but as far as starting a business and being supported and looking and and looking for help and and not being you know well you can't do that because of this you can't do that because of this I I I I think the hidden Gem and Indiana is is it's a it's a very entrepreneurial state but no one thinks of it as an entrepreneurial state but it is fertile ground for entrepreneurship that's your hidden J yes sir yeah all right final question of the lightning round who is someone we
need to keep on our radar someone who is doing big things his name is Christopher day and he goes by tote and I've known him forever but when he went to elev I he's doing some really really amazing things I mean I I mean I've known him he companies and companies ago he was a client of mine he became a friend of mine he's doing some really cool stuff he's shaking things up and his vision if you went to Rally last year you guys were there obviously you were on stage I went there I'm like w how did he even come up with this and
the next one's going to be better and you know and uh there's a lot of cool people doing stuff don't get me wrong but he's the one that if you you know it's the lightning around you ask me on the spot he's the one will come to my mind right now got to keep toe on your radar yeah I think so I think so I like him and he's genuine as as can be Haron this was great thank you so much for for all the expertise when it comes to everything Talent attraction hiring oh the list goes on and on so many actionable items I
love a good episode where we come out with like hey we need to go do XYZ rewrite our job our job descriptions amazing thank you so much and keep up all the hard work yeah okay cool thank you very much for the time I appreciate it thank you this is awesome Yep this has been get in a powder kick production in partnership with Elevate Ventures and we want to hear from you if you have suggestions for a guest or segment reach out to Matt or Nate on LinkedIn or on email to discover top tier tech companies outside of Silicon Valley in hubs like Indiana check
out our newsletter at powder.com newsletter and to apply for membership to the powdercake executive Community Check out powder.com premium we'll catch you next time and next week as we continue to help the world get in since you just listen to this podcast you might be thinking about starting one for your company lucky for you our partners over at casted have you covered casted is the first and only podcast in video marketing platform made specifically for B2B Brands I love this about them the platform makes it possible to publish Syndicate amplify and measure the value of your podcast and video content in fact we use it
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