Mike Seidle: Welcome to Pivot to First. I'm Mike Seidel, CTO here at PivotCX. I'm joined by David Bernstein, who is our VP of All Things Revenue. And today's special guest is affectionately known as the Indeed Whisperer. He's the founder of Respondable Recruitment Marketing, and he's also known as the social media headhunter. Jim Durbin, walk him. It's good to have a guy with many, many AKAs. Jim Durbin: Same guy, many faces. Right, aliases. Pfft. Ha ha ha. Mike Seidle: That works. That works. So we'll just go ahead and let's go kill the elephant in the room. Indeed, it's part of life if you hire more than a few people. What's new in Indeed's world right now? Jim Durbin: Sorry, it froze for a second. Start over. Mike Seidle: Oh, Jim Durbin: It froze for me. Mike Seidle: okay. Jim Durbin: Just as you're asking the question, you froze. Mike Seidle: Oh, okay, well, Jim Durbin: I'm sorry. Mike Seidle: we'll re-ask. So let's just go ahead and kill the elephant in the room right away. Indeed, it's almost a necessary thing. If you recruit more than a few people, you're probably using it. So, Jim, what's new in Indeed's world right now? Jim Durbin: I think the biggest challenge that's facing all the job boards is that job postings are trying to figure out are job postings actually falling or is there a new normal for it? Did we post too many? Are companies getting better at converting candidates? All of them, ZipRecruiter reported 29% drop in earnings. Indeed said the same thing earlier in the year. We've seen every single place in TA have layoffs. The question is, did they over hire? Which if you take a look at someone like Matt Charney's graphs, it'll show massive hiring in HR, which we do. and then massive layoffs, is it really a function of something in the economy or is it something specific to these platforms or is the model changing? Has the transition to cost per application and some of the things they've done in the last 18 months been too much? Are companies just not spending enough? And more importantly, as we go further and further in the tech, the integrations that are involved as we actually look at how our dashboards and all of the vendors working together, I think these are starting to have some challenges because we need to upskill our HR tech departments. If we can't work with Indeed because we can't get our stuff to work, obviously we're not going to be spending budget. So I think it's just a matter of people getting smarter. And then my concern really would be how is Indeed going to communicate to us when they make changes in the future. And then how do we make our decisions? I don't have a proper tech stack. So, I know that was my big complaint earlier this year when we were launching. What was it? April 1st. when they switched to the CPAS, the idea of the application. We were talking about it for six months. They announced it last year and indeed interactive, not even indeed FutureWorks. I was getting notes from a lot of people telling me what was going on, including internal memos, things they set up when they rolled it out in the UK. And it was strange that as a director of TA with a small LinkedIn following, I Mike Seidle: Mm-hmm. Jim Durbin: was posting the things that people got so excited about. So. I hope the lesson that they learned, because it was not a great rollout for them, is that corporate communications has to really step up. Because if they do communicate, we can at least plan for it. And I think the problem is they were so used to rolling things out on their product timeline, it didn't occur to them that we have yearly budgets and you can't just triple the cost of my sourcing halfway through the year because I can't go to the CEO and tell them I can just change. And so I think it forces people to go out and look for different opportunities. HR always has this fun little thing where if we stop posting for jobs, suddenly the minds of the managers become super focused. This is not a great thing for us, but hiring isn't affected at first. Because when you have 10 people coming in the door, you have time, but if you have one, you know, you need to hire. So it's this weird thing where we have a negative feedback loop. When we stop working, more gets done for a short period of time. And then we're flying on ball and we have to catch up and. So I think that's a lot of it with Indeed. They can learn to tell us more about what they're doing so that we can start making our plans and just work on getting better internally. Mike Seidle: We know, Jim, for us, when CPAS got rolled out, we did hear about that a year ago. And they kept talking about it and talking about it and seemed like it was around the corner, around the corner, and then it happened. And it was a really big, to a lot of our customers that rely on Indeed, that was a really big shot. It was like, wait a minute, now it costs three times as much. And a lot of them were, maybe we'd stop using Indeed. If you're gonna stop using Indeed, then where do you go? Jim Durbin: Well, that's the question, right? Have you built out your sourcing team in high volume? Are you prepared to pay higher rates? ZipRecruiter's good, but they're not as big, and they're the second biggest. So you can't just roll over to them, depending on where you are. You've got to start chasing your own candidate database. You got to focus on conversion. It's very similar to what happened. We'd mentioned both. We both have a marketing background, agency background. It's very similar to when SEO and SEM begin to mix. And instead of saying I'm an SEO company, I'm SEO on paperclip, it became a, Oh, we're a conversion company. Mike Seidle: Mm-hmm Jim Durbin: Our job is to not to just play with the monitors and more it's actually to provide the results that you're looking for. And I think we're at that moment now where companies, instead of just providing, I mean, that's why they're all talking about quality of hire. If you listen to AppCast and Pando, they're like, Oh, it's going to be about quality of hire. And I don't disagree that indeed needs to move to cost per applicant. I just think that they're a little fast in doing it. I think they assume that we would all just have to change. And the other companies are all saying the right thing, but it's very hard to measure the quality of an applicant. Mike Seidle: Well, you know, Jim Durbin: In fact, I think this. Mike Seidle: back in the day when I ran my agency, my digital marketing agency, the thing that we would run into a lot of was the difference between cost per click stuff and then on the other side we would have cost, you know, CPA, cost per action. So you're dealing with this very big difference and nothing exposes inefficiency. that more than when you go to paying for this outcome. So now instead of paying for clicks, the 26 clicks that get me a lead, now I'm paying for the lead and all of a sudden I'm realizing I'm paying a lot of money for these leads, the sales reps aren't calling anybody. I look at what's going on with Indeed and it sort of feels the same way. I'm paying now for application starts and it's exposing the fact that my recruiting team is not engaging with. Jim Durbin: If they're even being left, they've all been laid off. So that is a thing. So I think Google is probably exactly what we should be focusing on. I can't swear to this, but one of the things you do when you're talking to people in your head, I had a background. So when I sit Mike Seidle: Mm-hmm. Jim Durbin: and I interview people, I'm not listening to them like a person. I'm listening to them like a, like a dog that's recording the things they're saying and checking voice patterns. I don't need to figure out when you're lying to me and when you're lying to yourself. because those are two different things entirely. And it's done me really well in listening to vendors and listening to CSMs and salespeople. Because one of the things I started hearing about a year and a half ago was ideal customer or ideal customer spending profile. And Mike Seidle: Mm-hmm. Jim Durbin: what that meant when you look inside the ND documents, I didn't know if they'd look at this way, but this is very easy when I was crafting campaigns. They wanted to know what you wanted, what your risk tolerance was. So when you ran campaigns, the ideal customer profile figured out if David's gonna pay $10 for it, Jim's gonna pay two, we're only gonna give Jim the two so we're not wasting those candidates on him because there's a finite supply of candidates. If David pays 10, will he pay 12? Ooh, will he pay 14? If David's not paying attention, he'll pay 20 because he hasn't brought it up. If I always shut things off and never play it, my two, my long-term history with that account means I'm always getting things cheaper. It's like the way that Amazon does it. where if we all log in, we'll all have different prices based on when we return it, do we ever just buying something randomly? So there's a lot that goes into that. Well, the ideal customer profile really worked when it was CPC stuff, because I was able to figure out how to make those changes across a dozen different clients. The thing I started hearing, and you'll definitely know what I'm talking about when I say this, Mike, is a healthy budget. Now, if you just look for the definition of what healthy budget means, you'll think, oh, it means a lot. They're just trying to ask for more. But it's more than that. Google's healthy budget has to do with how the budget's dispersed across everything. Are you getting it, is it a power law where it's hitting one? Are you able to spruce it across different budgets? It has to do with the way they want to allocate your spending so they don't have wasted ads that nobody spends on. So I started hearing that word and I'm like, it's so familiar. I don't know if they Mike Seidle: Oh Jim Durbin: brought Mike Seidle: yeah. Jim Durbin: a developer over. I don't know if they intentionally did it or if it was just a marketing piece, but it does tell you. You heard it so many times, it became very clear that it's no longer ideal customer profile, it is now ideal customer spending profile, it's healthy budget. And then you start to see what they just recently rolled out. Like you hear this six months, and then all of a sudden they're like $25 budget minimums for campaigns, they're actively trying to cut out when you have 100 jobs out there and 40 of them are getting no clicks. They don't want those on the platform. It actually could, because they used to take anything, but now they like, they want good quality jobs so that they can match them up. So it's learning to listen to what they're actually saying sometimes really gives you keys into where it's going. Um, and it's not something you just hear from your CSMs, but there's, there's a lot that occurs behind the scenes and that helps you stay. Okay. Well, I need to make sure I'm posting my jobs correctly. Do I even know which jobs aren't getting clicks? That's a huge problem for a lot of us. especially when you're centralizing, because a lot of folks are centralizing those decisions and trying to bring recruitment marketing in house. The problem is, is if I'm responsible for something, Mike Seidle: Shhh Jim Durbin: it's all based on how much time I have. If you're responsible for it, I may post three jobs of my own, but I'm going to send you a list of 25. And you don't know if that's how what I was doing before, but what if they're, what if they're all within 15, 15 feet of each other, but it didn't occur to me that you don't really do that when you're posting jobs. So we've got this weird thing where. They're throwing jobs out, they're getting collapsed, because no one's minding the store on that end. So we've got to get our internal and our external, not just vendors, but our internal processes set in place, because it's no longer ideal spending profile. Now there's a penalty Mike Seidle: Thanks for watching! Jim Durbin: for making those changes, and I don't think people, and you can't make them. Here's Mike Seidle: Yeah. Jim Durbin: another tip for them. You get really good at your campaigns, doesn't matter if it's a vendor, with yourself, you set them and you don't touch them again for a bit. You need to get it right the first time, perfectly. You can't change your job, you can't drop titles, you can't pull some in and out because the new algorithm likes simplicity. And if you're not paying attention to that, it will stutter you, which means you'll start off great for two days, you're in a great mood. It'll stutter and stop running because you've made so many changes. And it could take up to 72 hours to even know what the idea is. You're gonna lose weeks, and then what are you doing at the end of the month? Trying to spend all that budget the last second. So you have these wild fluctuations. because you keep poking it instead of setting it correctly the first time and letting it go. So there's a lot less room for error for people now. And it's something the programmatic companies have been struggling with a little bit because one of their algorithms do they poke the bear constantly. So it's a, it's a big David Bernstein: So I Jim Durbin: change. David Bernstein: also think that this... Mike Seidle: Theoretically, that's what they do. David Bernstein: This phrase Jim Durbin: Hahaha! David Bernstein: though, the phrase apply start, I think is a misnomer as well, right? The concept of an apply start is an indeed focused phrase. I don't think it really fits for the employer's perspective. That Jim Durbin: Here's David Bernstein: terminology? Jim Durbin: the thing though, if you're sending traffic from somewhere and you're sending it to your career site page. So I built the career side of the last company I was with. I mean, I cut it way down. We did a fantastic job. We had, I think it was we had 75% conversion from the time they started, which is really good, right? And we had, Mike Seidle: Mm-hmm. Jim Durbin: it was about 50% bounce. Which if you know internet, you're not gonna beat that, right? That's just going to happen. Their bots and everything else. So any traffic sent to my page was 33%. And that is, that is incredible. 20% was considered fantastic. And they were talking about 20 over 75. The 33% of everybody who touched my page turned into an applicant. I hated that. That was so expensive to do that. We've got people that. they're converting 3% of the applicants that are showing up their page, not even the bounce traffic and the other ones. So I see where Indeed's going with it, which is why they all everybody go to integrations and honestly Directly Apply works so much better than just sending it and waiting for them to sign back up. But this is on us, this is on us. I don't blame them for doing that because what else are you supposed to do? But I do cringe and laugh a little bit when I see someone where I have to go register at their page because I know... I know I can charge them a whole lot of money to fix it. I can Mike Seidle: Yeah. Jim Durbin: go to a vendor and have it fixed instantly because they don't want to. They don't want to make that change and they don't know why it's so bad. Yeah, that's a brutal thing. Mike Seidle: Well, the change in pricing at Indeed will really make that particular problem hurt employers a lot. Jim Durbin: to. Mike Seidle: It just, all of a sudden, how well your career site works, it's going to be measurable. Whereas before it was a lot of really cheap clicks getting thrown at it. Nobody really understood what happens two, three steps later. But at the kind of pricing that you're seeing with Indeed now, if your career site doesn't work, you're probably going to have to fix it. Jim Durbin: And every vendor out there, every job board out there, every solution, whether it's Google ads or you're running stuff through Facebook and reconverting it on LinkedIn and retargeting, they're all going up, everybody, because there's less and less real candidates. And that's something we haven't really talked about yet, the number of fake profiles that are going to be occurring everywhere. Because we have so much money sloshing around our system now, verification becomes very important. We can spin up 5,000 profiles that are very, very hard to capture. The reason why is they haven't been able to make money off of it. And right now I don't think there's a problem. I know this because my last company PSG, their whole thing was they called everybody. So Mike Seidle: Mm-hmm. Jim Durbin: we ran our stuff through Indeed and ZipRecruiter and I can tell you almost, we called, we contacted everybody. So we didn't have, we have people wouldn't talk to us. We have different connect rates, but these are real candidates. I can't say that's true for some of the new boards that are coming in. They just don't have the fraud detection yet. And no matter how good indeed zip do, they're not gonna be big enough to stop the real criminals. Because why wouldn't they carve 8% of your budget off, send it to programmatic? This is the huge problem with programmatic. That's coming and we have to be prepped for it because what's happening right, and we can already see the waves of it. I talked about this six months ago, organic traffic's up, but how much of that is bot traffic? Or how much of that is the new AI tools that allow you to run your resume through go through Workday and one click it. When I see someone saying I applied 800 times, I know they didn't go through each one. They either did quick apply or did a tool like that. So traffic is up at all the career sites, but connect ratios are way down. So there's a quick disconnect. Oh, it's great, our traffic's up 50%. No Mike Seidle: Not Jim Durbin: hiring Mike Seidle: necessarily. Jim Durbin: got done. Our contact rate went from one in 10 down to one in 1,000. Wait a minute, what happened? Well, that's... That's what AI does, that people don't realize is coming. Mike Seidle: Yeah, it's going to be, this is going to be a really interesting situation when we start seeing AI fraud. You know, AI is being deployed to drive basically publisher revenue somewhere. It's going to be kind of difficult. And from what I've seen in the infrastructure in most HR tech stacks, they're not ready for it. Jim Durbin: I'm still surprised Mike Seidle: It's not. Jim Durbin: we haven't had a lot more identity breaches. I know we've had major ones, but I look at how the number of man in the middle attacks you could do on most major ATSs is terrifying with not even meaning to. So hey, if you're in tech and you don't know what I'm talking about, go find a drunk cybersecurity professional in Chicago hanging out at a bar. Find one who'll tell you about how bad the Russians were in the 80s and just ask them to pull up that Linux laptop. jump on a VPN and show you what a man in the middle is. So you can literally see the PIA information of every applicant at your website. That is, we don't talk about that kind of stuff because we're not prepped for it. And no one wants to shut down their site for it, but we have a lot of vulnerabilities in that and we need to start beeping that up because eventually it's gonna start biting us in the ass. Mike Seidle: In some cases, I think, you know, you can talk to the folks over at Kronos about it, but the bites are starting to happen. David Bernstein: UKG. Jim Durbin: Right. Mike Seidle: So, quick change of subject. Let's talk a little bit about your new agency and let's talk a little bit about Respondable. This sounds actually really exciting and it sounds to me like you're trying to do something that might be just a little bit different. Jim Durbin: Yeah, I'm so I've done recruitment marketing and an RPO for the last five years. I ran a marketing firm before that, but I've always stuck my hand in staffing and recruiting because I can't get it out. Um, I don't want to head hunt for real anymore because it's, I just don't have the grit to do it. I'm too lazy, um, to, to do what needs to be done day in and day out. Like that's not a part-time job. So I was always figuring out how can I do better? I had the benefit of being, um, born and raised in the industry when we still had a bunch of the MRI guys. I've headhunted, I've done staffing, recruiting, RPO, corporate, so I've touched all of them. And I've also trained 10,000 people on how to use digital tools. So I had a great webinar partner, and it's great to make a million dollars training people how to use LinkedIn and Facebook. But the problem is, is a lot of that was just wasted. And it was nice, they liked me, but they didn't learn anything. They didn't go back to the desk and fix anything, because you can't learn something in just an hour. So as I was looking around, I see all the changes coming with AI. I got really good at recruitment marketing so I could fix campaigns. I had the best prices in RPO in the world. There was not even a question about it. So much so that was actually a bit embarrassing. I was worried that was too much cheap traffic because I worry about the second and third order levels of effect. Where if you think that everything's coming in there's no problem, you don't have to make changes. When that traffic dries up as it invariably does, you're not prepared as a company. So I said, how do we make a difference with that? And I thought about going back into headhunting for recruitment marketing, but there's just not enough of us out there. The people I know are getting salaries that are, some have doubled their salaries, others are through the roof. Everyone's getting, if you're good at it, there's not a lot of them, but if you're good at it, your salary is very high and that means that there's just not enough demand on that supply. So how am I going to headhunt when there's not many people out there? So I started thinking, what else could I do? And the thought was, I think the real challenge is TA. Talent acquisition is still relatively young. It's only 20 years old. It's like this weird innovative center inside of operations. Mike Seidle: Shh. Jim Durbin: But there's a lot of well-meaning people. Our budgets have been exploding. And the challenge is, is that how do you mix your technology with the old school new, how to do recruiting life cycles? So what I would see by training all those recruiters is that they weren't taught the full life cycle. They were taught to do one thing. which is a real problem when you're moving up into management. You've only known how to do one thing. You do it great, but are you really a recruiter? It's like the folks who work for the big tech companies, and then they go to a small company and nobody cares anymore and they struggle because they're not sorting resumes or dropping the name Microsoft or Facebook. They have to go out and find something else. So they struggle with that. And so I've been very fortunate to have been able to mentor a number of people in my career. And the best time is when a company paid me over a series of months. to sit down with that individual and really upscale them. Not by talking, not by theory, but working on live problems and then eventually getting them to solve it. Because the key to good training is not just showing someone, it's not even them doing it. What happens when they fail? So they have to watch, Mike Seidle: Shh. Jim Durbin: so when we do our training, you go on stage on SourceCon, this guy does this crazy thing, it's amazing. You go back and you can't do it, so you give up. They don't realize that person was sitting there failing a dozen times, but that's not. compelling information on stage. So by working on something live, hitting a roadblock and having to route around the damage, that's when they begin to build confidence. Because they're like, okay, it's not that they're better than I am, they're just dogged, they're not giving up. They're thinking through, sometimes the answer's tech, sometimes the answer's marketing and content, sometimes the answer's the way the business runs. So to give you an example, there's a company that is working with, one and a bunch of warehouse workers in the middle of the country. And they had a, we gave them 700 people, which is first of all, a minor miracle, but they wanted more. I'm like, how could you possibly need more? Turns out they had 300% turnover. And I was like, okay, well, here's the problem, right? I called the branch man, you have to figure out what's going on the ground there, because there's nothing you can do from outside, from a centralized version, from my computer. Turns out another warehouse up the street had put a big sign up saying they paid $3 more in benefits on the first day. Those aren't things you can fix with tech. There's no algorithm that's gonna fix that for you. You have to know, but then you have to know who do I reach out to, how do I say it? Because it is kind of a, you can't just go stumbling around and go, you idiots, you didn't do it. You have to diplomatically and politely figure out where are the channels, who do you talk to, how do you say it, how do you allow them to save face, but how do you solve this problem? Because they're out there shrieking, hey, I don't have enough people. So how do you identify that? Those are the kinds of things that I wanted to start to do. So what I did is I came up with pretty simple, it's a monthly membership, it's a monthly subscription like sub stack or something like that. I didn't wanna have a big budget meeting. I didn't wanna say I've done this before. I don't wanna do invoices in 90 days and contract terms. So I made it as simple as possible. You swipe your credit card, you get in a Mike Seidle: Shh. Jim Durbin: period of time. I'm sitting down with the individual once a week or twice a week, so the thousand or 2000, once a week or twice a week. And then some people actually work on their. progress. So there's a third tier called the results package, which is finding to fix your stuff for a while. This is really cheap in comparison to what we normally pay for these. But the idea is I'm not fixing your problems, I'm making sure I'm fixing the problems with your people so they fix the next one. The goal really is to build the next generation of TA leaders. And it's getting great reception. So there's definitely a crying need for it. And it's great for me because it I don't spend my days on conference call selling. I get it, chatting with people, building content, and just trying to see if we make a difference. David Bernstein: Very practical, right? Yeah, very hands-on. Jim Durbin: Exactly and fun. I can go to the pool at one o'clock to two o'clock and not feel bad that someone's going to call me. So there, uh, I've had a good summer. David Bernstein: So how's that panning Mike Seidle: You David Bernstein: out Mike Seidle: know David Bernstein: so Mike Seidle: what it David Bernstein: far? Mike Seidle: sounds like? Jim Durbin: Fantastic. David Bernstein: How was the tractor like, yeah? Jim Durbin: I say, how's the what like? David Bernstein: traction for that. How's that going for you? Jim Durbin: I'm in my third week and without going too far into it, I've got enough pipeline that I'm not worried about anything at this point. So David Bernstein: So Jim Durbin: it's David Bernstein: there's Jim Durbin: more about David Bernstein: an appetite Jim Durbin: turning stuff David Bernstein: for Jim Durbin: down David Bernstein: it, Jim Durbin: than David Bernstein: yeah. Jim Durbin: a huge appetite for it. Mike Seidle: Thanks for watching! Jim Durbin: So when you're launching something new, it's always important. There's two things you have to think about in this space. One is do not run business in this space. A lot of people come from outside and they struggle with it. It takes a little while to learn it. It's not about logic. It's not about not understanding the process. It's not that we're all broken When a system is you think a system is broken. It's usually you don't understand the purpose of the system Mike Seidle: Thanks for watching! Jim Durbin: So the real question becomes how can you be positive? Right. So if you go to you got a responsible dio it says make your job posting a competitive advantage I don't say this job board sucks. I don't say these vendors are terrible. I don't say headhunters are eating your fees I talk about what's in it for you, which is you wanna do a good job, you wanna work with people you like. And I'm gonna build a large referral network, honestly, because I want people to, if you need to develop your internal people, come to me. If you have other problems, I'll chat with you, and I wanna be able to direct you to a vendor and make sure you're doing it right. So it's not a sales lead, it's a, this is something you need, this is how you're going to have to work to make this work for you. Because I think that's part of the problem, we're all out selling. My goal is how do we make it a little bit easier on us? How do we build some Mike Seidle: Yeah. Jim Durbin: long-term capability in TA so that our CEOs don't think that they can just hire some recruiters and throw bodies at the problem, but that some of us are experts, we need more because we don't do this with the money that we have coming in now, people from other parts of the corporation start coming in and we're not going to like that finance is sniffing around because they love it because of the stats and the big data. Sales is getting interesting when they burn. We don't want those people coming into HR and changing everything. But if we don't change, more talented people are gonna come. Yeah, Mike Seidle: They're gonna come. Jim Durbin: yeah. It's an important Mike Seidle: And that's, Jim Durbin: thing. Mike Seidle: yeah, you know, Jim, what sounds really exciting about what you're doing, I heard something that sounded really different to me because when you say recruitment marketing, I usually picture somebody that's gonna come in and do a bunch of stuff for you. Sounds like you're actually getting in with people and actually helping them learn how to do it for themselves. Jim Durbin: Exactly. Because if I do it, I mean, it's teach a man to fish. Right? Mike Seidle: Yeah. Jim Durbin: It's the exact, it's the exact same thing. And things are getting more complicated. We do have to learn more about technology. We have to learn to speak data, which is not something people in HR do very well. Whenever I say that they go, I read spreadsheets. That's not what I'm talking about. If you don't know the difference between data integrity and data accuracy, how could you possibly show your reports? Like I was sitting on a call with a guy earlier and he was showing me a dashboard. and they're trying to figure out how to do a better quality of hire. And I said, here's the problem. How do you know any of this data is correct? And how do you know the recruiter did it? We we've got to get better with those kinds of things, which means it doesn't do me any good to come and solve your immediate short-term problem. And by the way, it does, it's no, it's not fun to solve short-term problems. It's occasionally lucrative, but it's also annoying because then they're mad when it breaks. So do I take a buck? I'm starting to get a little older, a little gray around temples. I want to make sure that if I'm doing something, it actually makes a difference. What's the point of saving somebody money so there's a few points on their stock performance that quarter, when instead you could be building a generation of people that the next problem that comes along, they Mike Seidle: Thanks Jim Durbin: know Mike Seidle: for Jim Durbin: how Mike Seidle: watching! Jim Durbin: to save and solve and they have the confidence in it. So I'm not altruistic in that sense. I just don't want my time on this planet wasted. And saving a few bucks is just not the point, you know, because they say thank you and then they move on. And what I really want them to do is, what is our job? So I used to be a headhunter and I could see the impact. When you sit down with someone, you talk to their family, you can see a direct impact. That's actually a very dangerous thing because you get into this emotional contagion where you're really caught up in the lives of your candidates and your managers and your executives. Mike Seidle: Yes. Jim Durbin: The problem is, is when you move into high volume or you move into tech of some kind, or recruitment marketing is basically, you lose that sense. And... You have to learn to take a little bit of credit over 100,000 people, which is much different. Well, if you're not getting people to work, you don't even get that. It's like you're being paid to do nothing. So, yeah, I liked all the places that I've worked. I just think that the biggest issues facing us aren't being addressed right now. And I happen to be in a good place to do it with the right tech stack, and the right tool stack, and the training. I've touched them all. I know a little bit something about corporate politics. I'm a Gen Xer, so we actually Mike Seidle: Shh. Jim Durbin: had managers when I was first starting. Everyone makes fun of millennials. I'm like, you guys leaned out management ranks. They've never had good managers before, and that's your fault. Managers used to have like two people, three people. Now it's 12 or 20. You can't manage 20 people, not effectively. So in some ways, I'm like a surrogate manager for people in TA. How do I show them what should be and talk them through the correct things to say so that people get to work? That's the plan. That's the overall goal. I can sleep at night if I do that. David Bernstein: career development as well, right? Helping the next generation come behind you, yeah. So you mentioned a skill Jim Durbin: Yeah, David Bernstein: as well, something Jim Durbin: yeah, David Bernstein: about Jim Durbin: I don't David Bernstein: listening, Jim Durbin: want to be doing this to myself. David Bernstein: yeah. You were talking about listening to your vendors and things like that. Do you, in one of our earlier conversations, as one of the skills that you thought people needed to really kind of bone up on, do you kind of say a little bit more about that? Jim Durbin: Yeah, there's a one I'm shocked. How I put this Sarah White talked about this at Tatech as a job board conference. How about companies are dying to buy from us, but we're doing a terrible job selling to them. I think that goes both ways. I think a lot of folks in HR doesn't like to be in general doesn't like to be sold to T is a little bit different. I mean, there are some different animals from those. But I think part of the problem is how do you walk into a meeting, waiting for a pitch and a demo and then blame the other person? Um, I mean it'd be like taking a call and I've seen them. You sat on these calls. It's amazing. The Slack channels back and forth when a giant corporations, you sit on that and people are like, this is persons terrible. And I'm like, do you want a dancing monkey? Is that what it Mike Seidle: Thanks Jim Durbin: is? Mike Seidle: for watching! Jim Durbin: Do you, do you need balloons going up in the background? Maybe some tick tock news Mike Seidle: you Jim Durbin: feeds that you feel better. How are you walking into a situation where you don't know what the company does itself and are waiting for them to explain it to you? I think there's a balance there. And so who you pick as a vendor matters because integrations, they're all about being sticky. It isn't just try you, even though the contracts aren't long-term, there's a real opportunity cost and a real internal cost to picking any vendor. The idea that you're sitting back like a king on a throne. watching people display for you is just, it's a bad idea for us. So what I want people to do is learn to sit and actually listen to what the vendors say and know what it is that they're doing ahead of time. Have your questions in place. And some people have actually asked me to do this because they're like, how do I pick a vendor? How do Mike Seidle: Thanks Jim Durbin: I go Mike Seidle: for watching! Jim Durbin: through an RFP process? Because RFP process is dumb. You guys hate doing them, I'm sure. And when you read them from the other side, they don't make any sense either. And now people are Mike Seidle: You Jim Durbin: using Mike Seidle: know. Jim Durbin: chat GPT to write them. Oh Mike Seidle: Yeah, David Bernstein: Yeah. Mike Seidle: as a, you know, I'll just put the, hey, I'm a vendor hat on real quick. You go look at a lot of interactions you have with people that are buyers or potential buyers. I think a lot of times, they clearly don't understand what they even need to be buying. It's just they've realized I need this category of thing. And so I'm gonna go get some leaders in that category and shoot them out. and they're not even thinking about the business outcome or what's actually needs fixed. And so you get the classic, you know, the classic one is I need new ATS. And you hear that over and over, I need new ATS, you know, the problem's the ATS. And most of the time the problem is internal process stuff, not the ATS. It's something that's in your own house. And I used Jim Durbin: but that's Mike Seidle: to hear Jim Durbin: not Mike Seidle: that Jim Durbin: something Mike Seidle: with the Jim Durbin: you can Mike Seidle: advertising. Jim Durbin: write a check for. Ha ha ha. Mike Seidle: Yeah, you write a big check, but here's the thing, you take that to the CEO and he's going to do that. The CEO is going to do that. So they're going to look at your numbers and go, you want to spend $500,000, a million dollars on a new ATS, okay. How many candidates is this going to get and how many hires is this going to make versus what we're doing today? Jim Durbin: I don't think anyone has ever answered that. I don't know how you would. Mike Seidle: There Jim Durbin: How Mike Seidle: is Jim Durbin: could you possibly? Mike Seidle: the answer. Jim Durbin: That's Mike Seidle: It doesn't do that. Ha ha. Jim Durbin: not what it does. We don't know, right? Mike Seidle: It's tough. So if somebody does think they could use your help, what's the best way for them to engage with you? I know you're highly selective with what you're doing and you're looking for a very, very specific kind of customer. Jim Durbin: Yeah, and I'm not being rude about it. I've trapped with anybody, but I just, I'm not gonna do what I don't want to do because there are other people that do that and you drown in that. The ideal profile is pretty straightforward. If you're spending five to 50K a month, and you're programmatic, you're probably, there's a lot of waste that's involved in there. And it's your fault. I think we can fix that. If you're trying to make some decisions about vendors. If you lost your recruitment marketing director, you're trying to build one, you know this is a capability. If you're trying to build your team out over time, it's great to bring me in because you don't need the perfect person. You need someone that's 60, 70%. You can hire internally, I can take one of your bright, curious people and walk them through how to deal with the tech side, how to do the business side, the political side aspect of it. And so it's really an upscaling issue. So as a director, you... It certainly is a VP. You simply don't have time to sit and download and learn. Also, by the way, because a lot of them, you'll know process, you may be great at recruiting. You're not going to be digging into how a webhook works. It's just not something you're going to bring up. You have to look at somebody else, but that's half the problem. What if the problem is your integration? What if it's your job posting? What if it's the campaign? What if it's the market? What if it's the conversion of candidates? There's so many questions. There's no way for you to be an expert on each one of them. So you bring me in to fill in that gap so that you have the confidence, you know it's going to get done and you know that when I'm gone, I mean these aren't designed to be lying, I don't need to be talking to someone for two years. It's designed to put someone through the paces and level up their skills. I even have one company that wants to work on their CSMs. Not to teach them about recruitment marketing. What we talked about doing was bringing people in and saying, these are the problems my clients experience, what's going on in the inside. And so we teach them to start thinking and eventually they'll be able to get together just like you would if you had 10 experts with you. Oh, we've seen this before. Like the example of the warehouse. So yeah, if you want to upscale your people and you're having problems finding the right one, and if that's the goal. That's a good time to call me. If your house is on fire, I might be able to help a little, but reality is at that point you probably need a lot of help and I'll refer some to you. So, uh, that's probably the best. People building for this next great wave which is coming. Mike Seidle: Okay, so we're kind of reached the point here where we're approaching the end and we always have a few questions we ask every guest and you know the whole goal here is you know surprise us a little bit and Jim Durbin: Okay, careful. Mike Seidle: easy, easy questions David Bernstein: Hahaha Mike Seidle: so no stress, no right answers, Jim Durbin: Hahaha! Mike Seidle: no wrong answers unless you're wrong. So first question, so what business book have you read that really had a big impact on you? Jim Durbin: Waiting Through Intimidation. It's a book from Robert Ringer from the 1970s about selling commercial real estate. And I read it about halfway through my business career and I realized I did half of the stuff. Like it's called Expert From Afar, you fly in. It's not really about intimidation, it's about the reality of the world. It's not your pitch, it's not your product. It's what's going on in the minds of the other people. And once you're prepared for that, you can build a process and a system. So... For example, when someone calls you, you could do work, this is long for Zoom stuff. By flying in, you're saying, I have the money to fly in. You're focusing their attention. Someone in town is gonna take six months to decide. You fly in, they get everybody in that room at the end, you hand them a contract, and you told them, and they sign it because they know that time is that important. So it's little things like that. And the book is just, it just reminds you that the whole world's out to get you, and that's okay. You just gotta keep working correctly, work smart. Don't make the stupid hope errors. Don't get to the point where you really need something. Work to a point where you're confident, you know what you're doing. It's a great book for any salesperson, but definitely for any entrepreneur. Mike Seidle: So winning through intimidation. Jim Durbin: winning through intimidation. New York Times best seller, it's been around for 50 years now. Mike Seidle: Okay, next question and this one is hopefully a softball favorite movie. Jim Durbin: My favorite movie, Groundhog Day. Greatest movie of all time. Acknowledged David Bernstein: And... Jim Durbin: as the greatest movie of all time. It's about hope and resurrection and friendship and learning and he doesn't just get better and win. Nope, nope, he has to transform himself into a different person. It's got Bill Murray. I've got the whole thing memorized because I've seen it so many times. Mike Seidle: It's a great movie and you know what's really funny? I am a software engineer by trade, so when I get into a lot of things, iteration is something people don't understand. I always go to Groundhog Day as the example. That is iteration. David Bernstein: Yeah. Jim Durbin: That really Mike Seidle: That's how Jim Durbin: is. Mike Seidle: it works. You can take somebody who's totally untalented, callous, and all that, and through the power of iteration, you can watch Bill Murray develop into this great humanitarian by the end of the movie. It's the story of iteration in use. Jim Durbin: That's pretty Mike Seidle: It's Jim Durbin: funny. Yeah. Mike Seidle: actually one of my favorites too, so that's a great choice. All right, Jim, last question. Anything that we should have asked you that we didn't. Jim Durbin: You didn't ask me about my original sentence that I've never heard before. Mike Seidle: Okay, David Bernstein: Uh, Mike Seidle: what's Jim Durbin: So David Bernstein: go for Mike Seidle: the original David Bernstein: it. Mike Seidle: sentence Jim Durbin: I don't, Mike Seidle: that I've never Jim Durbin: and Mike Seidle: heard Jim Durbin: the last Mike Seidle: of? Jim Durbin: two years I've been looking for that, like you look around and what's something you've never heard before, right? Mike Seidle: Okay. David Bernstein: right? Jim Durbin: This is one I'm pretty sure you've never heard before. If you're going to use the shower, don't use the toothbrush. I use that for my toes. Mike Seidle: I've David Bernstein: Wow. Mike Seidle: never heard that before. Jim Durbin: I've never heard Mike Seidle: And you Jim Durbin: that Mike Seidle: know what? Jim Durbin: before. Mike Seidle: You know what? I hope I Jim Durbin: I Mike Seidle: never Jim Durbin: don't Mike Seidle: do. Jim Durbin: want to. Mike Seidle: Ha ha. David Bernstein: Right? What was the context for that? Yeah. Jim Durbin: Oh no, you don't get that. David Bernstein: Oh, okay. Jim Durbin: You don't get that. Now you know, you just get the original Mike Seidle: Oh, Jim Durbin: sentence. David Bernstein: Do the original Jim Durbin: Ha ha David Bernstein: sentence, Mike Seidle: well, this David Bernstein: okay. Yeah. Mike Seidle: thing is so good you don't Jim Durbin: ha. Mike Seidle: even need it. It's like, okay, something you never want to hear in real life. David Bernstein: Yes. Jim Durbin: You just, Mike Seidle: Wow. Jim Durbin: you're like, I don't think the universe has ever heard that before. Yeah. It's pretty David Bernstein: those Jim Durbin: fun. David Bernstein: three ideas Mike Seidle: Well, Jim, David Bernstein: together. Mike Seidle: thanks so much for joining us today. And thank you again for being a guest for David and I. Have a great weekend. Jim Durbin: Thank you. See you David Bernstein: joining Jim Durbin: guys. David Bernstein: us to help you out. Cheers.