December 30, 2025 • 41 mins
Everett Chaffin, Director of Global TA Operations at Zendesk, joins us to explore how recruiting operations can become a true force multiplier for people. He shares his journey from starting his career at his dad's agency to running TA Ops for Zendesk. He unpacks how AI, standardization, and storytelling empower recruiters to act as trusted talent advisors rather than just process owners.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:46):
Hey, today we have Everett Chaffin on the show.
He is the director of global TAoperations and programs for
Zendesk, and we have reallyexciting things to talk about.
So, Everett, thanks for joiningme on the show.
SPEAKER_01 (00:58):
Yeah, thanks for having me, James.
I really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00 (01:00):
Yeah, of course.
To start us off, we want tolearn more about you, uh a
little bit about just who youare.
Could you share a little bit?
SPEAKER_01 (01:07):
Yeah, sure.
So um, father of five, live inTexas currently, and uh I think
what makes me kind of unique inthe recruiting space is that
I've actually known I was gonnabe a recruiter since I was a
young kid, right?
My my dad started owning anagency back in 1998, and I grew
up going to work with my dad.
He owned video stores beforethat.
So I grew up going to work withhim, and then when he moved into
recruiting, um kind of the samething was going to work with him
(01:29):
before school, coming over afterschool, and really seeing how
you know how he did his job andwhat that entailed.
And at a young age, I'm like, Ithink I can do this.
And my dad would actually giveme tasks to do at a young age to
try to like source candidates.
Of course, this is 98.
There is no LinkedIn.
You're looking at company listsor you know, trying to just find
companies online in any waypossible using old search
companies.
(01:50):
And at one point, he actuallygave me a CFO search and he was
just trying to keep meentertained and you know, not
bothering him essentially.
I was like, look, if you canfind me three candidates, I'll
talk with them if any of themmake sense.
And if you know somebody getshired, I'll give them or I'll
buy you a go-kart.
Thinking, of course, that Iwould never have any kind of
shot at actually accomplishingthat.
I ended up finding threecandidates, presented to my dad
(02:11):
these candidates.
He liked one of the candidates,reaches out, and no joke, this
guy turned out to be the guy whomarried the CFO at his wedding
like five years prior.
They were like best friends andthey had fallen out of contact
and were like, oh my gosh, likeI love this guy.
Like, I can't believe I didn'tthink about him for the role.
And it got all the way throughthis through the whole interview
process.
He got an offer, and then itturned out this guy tried to
(02:32):
double dip on a bonus and hisfriend found out, and so they
ended up taking away the offer.
But I was hooked.
I was like, okay, like if I if Icould do this at 12, I can do
this for a career.
And so at that early age of 12,I knew I was going to be a
recruiter and it really kind ofshaped the way that I was moving
forward in my life because I'mlike, this is what I want to do.
And so I was always trying tolearn from my dad and always
trying to listen toconversations and really
(02:52):
understand what made himsuccessful.
And I think that really helpedcatapult me into uh into my
career.
SPEAKER_00 (02:57):
You might be the only guest that I've had that
knew they wanted to get intorecruitment when they were a
kid.
I think like everybody was justlike, like most people, I didn't
realize I was gonna end up inrecruiting.
SPEAKER_01 (03:08):
Yeah, most people just fall into it.
Like I don't think it's notnormally like a family business.
It's actually kind of funnybecause I have other parts of my
family outside of my dad's sidewho are also recruiters and have
owned recruiting agencies foryou know 20 plus years.
So just for whatever reason, myfamily has a a lot of recruiters
in it.
SPEAKER_00 (03:24):
Yeah, that's great.
That's great.
So when you became an adult,right, and you grew up, was your
first full-time recruiting jobat your family's company?
SPEAKER_01 (03:34):
It was, yeah.
Yeah.
So I did um executive retainedsearch for three and a half
years and I cut my teeth in therenewable, renewable energy
industry.
So working on, you know, solarmanufacturers, a large uh EPC,
so engineering procurement,construction companies that were
building massive wind farms andsolar farms and things like
that.
And you know, was working, likeI said, at an executive level
very early on.
(03:55):
And I think that kind of helpedme understand that recruiting is
about people, not intimidation.
And you can build strongrelationships with really
high-level executives, and youdon't have to be afraid of, oh,
this person's a CEO or thisperson's a you know VP
somewhere.
Everyone's just people at theend of the day.
And if you know you do goodwork, like you'll be you'll be
just fine.
You don't need to have that likeintimidation factor.
SPEAKER_00 (04:12):
Yeah, for sure, for sure.
And so now fast forward, you'reover at Zendesk and you're based
in uh Austin, is that right?
SPEAKER_01 (04:19):
Yeah, I'm a little little town outside of Austin.
SPEAKER_00 (04:21):
Oh, cool.
SPEAKER_01 (04:22):
So are you from Austin for about 20 years?
SPEAKER_00 (04:25):
Oh, okay.
Where are you from initially?
SPEAKER_01 (04:26):
Uh Sacramento.
SPEAKER_00 (04:28):
Sacramento?
SPEAKER_01 (04:29):
Yes.
I spent about the first 20 yearsin Sacramento and then the the
last 20 years uh in and aroundAustin, essentially.
SPEAKER_00 (04:34):
Okay.
All right.
So you move out to Austin forwork or yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (04:38):
Um well, I wanted to kind of change things up.
I was living in California andit's just so expensive in
California.
And you know, Austin's kind ofhaving a tech scene that was
starting to emerge, and I feltlike a good chance to come out
and check out somethingdifferent.
My mom's family is in Texas, andso I wanted to just kind of have
a change of scenery and came outhere and actually joined a
recruiting agency called the HTGroup.
I was there for about a year,and that's kind of my first jump
(05:00):
into tech.
And it was tech manufacturingwas a little bit different, and
uh did that for a year, and thenluckily actually Indeed reached
out to me at the time.
They had a recruiting role, anduh they were based here in
Austin, and so I ended upinterviewing with them and
joining Indeed, and Indeed atthat time was about maybe 800
globally.
When I left Indeed, there wasabout 12,000 employees.
So I got in at a very early timeand was there for seven years
(05:22):
and really saw that grow andturn into just a massive
company, which was just anamazing experience in general.
SPEAKER_00 (05:28):
Yeah.
And now you're at Zendesk andyou're balancing uh working at a
category defining leading techcompany, and you have five kids
at the same time.
I don't I don't know how you youpull that off.
SPEAKER_01 (05:41):
That's uh I have an amazing wife and it definitely
helps.
And my kids are great too.
Like I really do have good kids.
I'm pretty blessed.
That's awesome.
SPEAKER_00 (05:48):
What's what's the age range in in your kids?
SPEAKER_01 (05:50):
Like, yeah, so I have um almost two-year-old, and
then I have a nine-year-old, aten-year-old, a
thirteen-year-old, and afifteen-year-old.
SPEAKER_00 (05:56):
That's a pretty good spread right there.
SPEAKER_01 (05:57):
Yeah.
And it's nice because the olderones, you know, help the younger
ones.
And so it's not just like mywife and I, right?
Like, we do have the extra thehelp and support.
And luckily, my parents movedfrom California and just live
right down the street from me aswell.
So it's, you know, we have thatextra um kind of built-in
babysitting as well.
SPEAKER_00 (06:12):
Yeah, that's nice.
That is nice.
That helps a lot.
Um so hey, so at Zendesk rightnow, so director of global TA
operations programs andexecutive recruiting sounds like
funnels up into you as well.
Could you just give us anoverview on exactly what your
role is and maybe how the talentacquisition team is uh built
(06:35):
within the company so we just wecan understand your point of
impact a little better?
SPEAKER_01 (06:38):
Yeah, absolutely.
So essentially I own like alltools, systems, vendors,
enablement, global coordination,early careers, executive
recruiting, internal mobility,um, essentially kind of
everything that helps make thetalent acquisition team operate.
And then outside of like theactual delivery, I have a uh a
boss, a leader who owns kind ofall the that that delivery side
(07:01):
of things, and then I owneverything else to essentially
help make sure that our teamsare as efficient as possible.
My real goal and the thing thatI'm working on is how do I or
how do we get more out of whatwe have, right?
And how do we make people moreefficient?
How do we make them betterrecruiters and really elevate
them to talent advisors, right?
Because that's I think the key,right?
Anybody can be a recruiter, butyou know, not everybody can be a
talent advisor.
(07:21):
And so how do we give them theopportunity and the space to do
that?
And so part of that from my sideof things is how do we make them
more efficient?
So it's looking at differenttools, essentially artificial
intelligence, right, AI, andunderstanding how we can
incorporate that into ourday-to-day to free up time for
the things that are moreimportant that allow us to have
a better hiring managerexperience, a better candidate
experience.
So I'll give you an example.
So one of the things that Ithink was pretty impactful
(07:43):
recently that um we incorporatedwas actually a inbound applicant
review, like scoring system.
And so essentially, if you thinkabout it, we have over a
thousand people that we'rehiring on a yearly basis.
We have hundreds of recs open atkind of any one time, and we're
getting a very large qual orquantity of candidates that are
coming in inbound to our recs.
(08:03):
The best recruiter on a good daymight be taking 15 to 30 seconds
to review a resume, in somecases, maybe as much as a
minute, right?
We had 140,000 resumes that camethrough this tool that we were
able to rank and rate andbasically sort based on you know
fit according to the jobdescription.
And then the must-haves and nicehaves that we even put into the
large language model.
And so when you think about thetime savings for something like
(08:25):
that, 140,000 resumes, even 30seconds, that's you know 70,000
minutes.
How many months of time is that?
And things like that, and tryingto understand what are the use
cases for AI within recruitingand how do I continue to
increase the efficiency of ourteam because budgets aren't
necessarily changing, right?
So how do we increase what ourteams can do without majorly
changing the budget?
And that's kind of where my mainfocus is right now, and trying
(08:47):
to understand holistically whereelse we can use AI.
SPEAKER_00 (08:50):
So that's interesting because also, I
mean, uh that coupled withexecutive recruiting, how did
that Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (08:57):
So right now, the way that we are doing executive
recruiting is more of a program.
So it's more of like a whiteglove approach.
We do heavily use vendors andagencies at this time.
Um, and so it's managing thoseagencies and making sure that
things are going well, kind ofcoupled also with like
scheduling and candidateexperience.
And so we've built out a programthat essentially allows not only
candidates that are comingthrough an agency, but also
(09:17):
candidates that are comingthrough our own internal teams
to have the same experience thatexecutives can always know that
they're gonna have the samestandardized experience and
really allow us to make surethat for everything is moving
very smoothly for all partiesinvolved.
And so that's kind of where itis right now, and that is
continuing to evolve, and Icould see that going a couple
different ways.
But the main thing was justmaking sure that we standardized
stuff for kind of everybody andhad a really great experience,
(09:39):
all the information, smoothprocess, quick responses, and
things like that.
SPEAKER_00 (09:44):
So, how do you go about identifying the biggest
pain points in terms ofoptimizing through tech?
I mean, is it like are youconstantly having conversations
with I suppose it's on the townacquisition side, but probably
also on the hiring manager side.
What's your process ofessentially analyzing and
figuring out what to moveforward with, what type of tech
(10:05):
to move forward with?
SPEAKER_01 (10:06):
Yeah, absolutely.
At the end of the day, therecruiting team is my customer,
right?
It's not what I think is themost effective or efficient or
you know, what I think would bethe best tool.
It's really, you know, I reallywant the recruiters to drive the
things that have value and whatthey're trying to do.
And so it's having a lot ofconversations with the
recruiters, with the recruitingmanagers and understanding like,
what are the things that aretaking the most amount of time
for you?
Where are the opportunities tobe more effective?
(10:28):
You know, what can we do toelevate the team and really get
them in the spot where they cando more with what they have and
not lose any of that candidateexperience or really even
increase the candidateexperience because they do have
more time to spend withcandidates or to spend with
hiring managers.
And so that's kind of from therecruiting side of things.
And then when I first joinedfirst joined the company, there
wasn't really anystandardization from the hiring
(10:48):
manager side of things.
And so the processes were notI'm saying disready or something
like that, but there wasn't astandardized process.
There was really nothing butstandardized.
Reporting wasn't standardized orany of that.
And so working with the businessto understand what their pain
points were, where they saw thebiggest opportunities for
success and to come in.
And there's a lot of low-hangingfruit, essentially.
And so the first kind of let'ssay eight to ten months or so
(11:09):
was standardizing interviews,standardizing reporting, going
and working with all thedifferent finance groups, with
the different leaders,understanding what views they
wanted to see.
Because I also have built outlike all the reporting and
everything.
Essentially, like all everythingthat I'm trying to do is for the
business or for the recruiters.
And so I work very heavily withwhatever group that I'm
supporting to make sure thatwhatever a tool or situation I'm
doing that the outcome is goingto meet their needs.
SPEAKER_00 (11:30):
Okay, so you've had a really interesting career,
right?
And I I think it's pretty coolthat it started when you were 12
also.
So you actually got like yourlot more experience than most
people your age, right?
You started off on the agencyside, but what's cool is like
you start off in very early, itsounded like more executive
search, and then you've been atreally hyper growth uh
(11:53):
organizations, like Indeedsounds like it was scaling to an
insane extent while you werethere.
And now you're at Zendesk,right?
Which most folks, particularlytech, are very familiar with,
and you're on the kind ofsystems side, right?
Um so you have a reallyinteresting, I think,
perspective and and uhexperience that I'd say a lot of
(12:13):
TA leaders haven't been exposedto.
So I'm I'm curious, are thereany top kind of like principles
or takeaways or things thatyou've learned throughout your
career that you've when it comesto building like TA programs
that you're saying, hey, this isthe most important thing, or
what is always top of mind foryou and what are the top kind of
takeaways from your career thusfar?
SPEAKER_01 (12:32):
Is yeah, so I would say it's okay to fail, but you
want to fail fast and you wantto learn from that failure as
quickly as possible.
And like in, you know, if you'renot failing, you're not
learning, kind of a thing,right?
Like you got to try differentthings, you gotta be willing to
take some chances, but alsounderstand that not everything
is gonna work.
And so if you do need to pivotand make an adjustment, then
that's totally okay, right?
(12:53):
Um, I would say another thingtoo is that feedback is a gift,
right?
You want to have feedback.
If you're not getting feedback,then you're not gonna truly
understand where youropportunities for growth are or
how to operationalize better.
And so I'm always asking forfeedback, always wanting to know
what I can do better, how can Iadjust something to make myself
more effective.
And I think that's somethingthat's really done well in my
(13:13):
career.
And then I would say for therecruiters out there, become a
storyteller.
Don't just be some that'spitching something.
Like being a storyteller willreally help sell opportunity and
really tie together theopportunity and the experience.
And so you can really increaseyour ability to attract
top-level candidates and havereally great conversations and
truly understand what people areabout and not just checking some
boxes on a paper and hoping thatthe person's interested.
(13:36):
Because if the person is notbought into you and bought into
the company, you're just anotherperson.
But if they feel connected toyou and they feel like you've
built this connection, likethey're less likely to ghost
you, they're less likely toprobably turn down your your
offer.
And historically, like my teamshave had in the high 90s offer
acceptance rates.
And when I was a recruiter, Iwas in like the 99% acceptance
rate because people felt like wewere friends, right?
And it wasn't that it wasdisingenuous.
(13:56):
Like I was friends with a lot ofthese candidates, but you know,
I built a relationship with themand I I understood who they were
and where they were coming fromand really tied that to the
opportunity at hand and how thatcould really tie into the things
like maybe they didn't have agood work-life balance and they
wanted to spend more time withtheir family, or maybe they were
struggling and they needed moremoney, and that would really
kind of help their quality oflife.
And so it was understanding thepain points of candidates, I
(14:16):
think, really um and how thatties into what you're offering
them, really will help you besuccessful as a recruiter.
SPEAKER_00 (14:22):
I think storytelling is incredibly important.
And I'm curious, I think the waywhat you're saying is that
understanding their pain pointsand the storytelling is also
like essentially it's part oftelling the story, right?
Because you want to be able tohighlight essentially what's
really important to thecandidate.
So let me just I'm gonna explainand see if you could tell me if
I'm thinking about this theright way.
(14:43):
Okay.
Um, or like for instance, ifthey're focused on work-life
balance, then you would probablyfocus more on the cultural
aspects of potentiallyboundaries or scope or the
communication style uh of likeleadership about communicating,
what's expected within whattimeline.
And um, and that's more of thestory that you tell.
(15:05):
It's just like deciding what toemphasize and focus on when
you're is that what you're yeah,I think you know I think you hit
the nail on the head, right?
SPEAKER_01 (15:13):
It's yeah, understanding how what your
value prop is to their problem,right?
And so how can you best sell orhow can you best alleviate
whatever issue that they hadwith what you're selling?
Because at the end of the day,recruiting itself.
You're selling an opportunity,you're selling a hiring manager,
you're selling a team, andeverything is like it's like 360
sells, is what I used to say,right?
And so it's understanding,overcoming objectives and
understanding where the problemsare and how you can alleviate
(15:33):
those problems essentially withwhatever it is that you're
packaging up and giving to them.
That's kind of how how I lookedat it.
SPEAKER_00 (15:40):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (15:40):
And where did you was that like experience you
started to gain from the verybeginning working on uh working
with you You know, I think Ithink I actually got that from
my like face-to-face sales for Iworked for T-Mobile when I was
real young, um sellingsmartphones, like right when
phones and smartphones like orlike a smartphones came out,
that was what I was doing.
And I was at a mall and it waslike high touch point, and
people were trying to leave andthey weren't really trying to
(16:02):
buy something right then.
So it was like constantlyovercoming objectives and trying
to get them to that likeacceptance place, right?
And I think that really actuallyhelped shape my ability to sell
opportunities within recruiting.
It really helped me.
Like finding people was great.
I understood how to do that.
I did that a lot.
I was basically like a sorcererfor my dad growing up, right?
But actually sellingopportunities and having those
conversations, I think a lot ofthat experience came from my
(16:23):
face-to-face sales withinT-Mobile.
And one thing I think too thatalso helped kind of when I was
thinking about getting people toaccept offers, you're not always
gonna have an offer that isgoing to excite the candidate,
right?
Maybe they wanted a hundred andyou're coming in with 95 or
whatever that situation may be.
I learned very quickly that if Icame in and told them, hey,
first thing is you know, badnews, oh, you're getting 95,
(16:45):
like they're gonna be turnedoff, they're not gonna be
excited about the opportunity,and they're probably not gonna
listen to anything or having tosay after.
And you may have a lot of valueprop outside of just the base
salary.
Maybe there's unlimited timeoff, maybe there's food, or
whatever that may be.
And so I learned very quickly onoffers where the best or the
thing that I wanted to give thisperson wasn't necessarily gonna
happen.
I would start with all the otherthings first.
So they would have to listen tomy entire pitch, and then I
(17:07):
would deliver like the daysalary.
But at that point, they wouldalready be so jazzed about all
the other benefits and perks andthings that the business and the
team that they're gonna beworking on by the time I got to
oh, you're gonna be making 95,not 100.
They didn't even care.
They were already gonna acceptthe role.
And so I think it's to how youposition information to
recruiters or how you positioninformation to the business or
your team or whatever, and thatreally can change the way that
(17:29):
that information is received.
And so it's important to have apositive attitude and relay that
information in a positive wayand really think about the way
that you're giving it because itcan really greatly change the
outcome.
SPEAKER_00 (17:40):
So you feel like the like starting off in on the
sales path to like even back inthe days we were doing T Mobile
was pretty formative experiencethat potentially enabled you to
be able to see things the waythat you you do now, right?
SPEAKER_01 (17:53):
Absolutely.
100%.
And yeah.
And to even expand on that, Ihired people with zero
recruiting experience on myteam.
Like I met a guy sellingfurniture who sold me my
furniture, and he just gave methis fantastic experience.
I'm like, I think you would be agreat recruiter.
I ended up hiring him at indeed,and he absolutely crushed it.
The guy was you know, 30 years,like literally like 30 years
(18:13):
sales experience, never donerecruiting, and came in and just
absolutely blew it out of thewater.
And I did that with a fewdifferent individuals, kind of
similar backgrounds.
And so personally, my ownexperience and just what I've
seen, like people that have thatkind of sales background coming
into recruiting typically arepretty successful.
SPEAKER_00 (18:28):
Yeah, I think so.
It's like the huge behavioralelement, yeah.
Right, which is, I mean, I Ithink I see that well, it's in
every industry, but it'ssomething we talk about a lot in
tech, particularly as fast pacedas it is, and you have to be
super adaptable with recruiting.
You have to be able to connectwith people and really uncover
quickly what matters to them,right?
SPEAKER_01 (18:47):
You can't be afraid to talk to people.
I think you know, picking up thephone, I think is almost a lost
art nowadays.
I'm not saying that people don'tpick up the phone anymore, but
it's much easier and safer tosend a text message or send an
email.
But there's I think somethinglost just picking up the phone
and having a conversation withsomebody, delivering news in
that way, or just trying to geta hold of them.
It's a lost art in some ways.
(19:07):
And I think that people that arenot afraid to pick up the phone
and call someone will have a lotof success and maybe nothing
more than something that's not,but I don't know.
I think there's just there'ssomething to it.
SPEAKER_00 (19:16):
Yeah.
Well, so when you think aboutbuilding systems, right, and
tech stacks and working withyour recruiters, how do you help
them find that balance, right?
Because your part of your roleis like optimization,
automation, but from the lens,I'm assuming from enabling your
recruiters to have moreimpactful conversations.
But is there any like guidancethat you give them in terms of
(19:40):
how to think navigating that orwhere it makes sense to slow
down and making sure thatwhatever process and motion
you're building out still giveslots of space and opportunity
for your recruiters to createthose relationships?
I'm sure that that probably goesinto how you think about
building a tech stack, right?
Is optimizing for relationshipsin a sense like allowing your
recruiters to invest in those,right?
SPEAKER_01 (20:02):
Yeah, yeah.
So yeah, to your point, I'mtrying to find tools and build
systems that, again, areincreasing the capacity of our
recruiters to allow them tospend time on things like
building relationships with thehiring managers, spend more time
on an intake, truly understandthe roles, spend some time with
the team.
Like if it's a team that you'regonna be working a ton with,
like go spend some time withthem, listen to what they're
doing, understand their roles,go to their stand-ups that
(20:23):
they're within engineering,really embrace those positions
and what their roles are andwhat they're doing, and become a
subject matter expert on it sothat you can ask the right
questions.
And also you can start to learnhow to talk with the hiring
manager, how to push ondifferent things because of
experiences that you've had orthings that you've heard.
And so you start to have thisdeeper understanding and you
become a true industry expert onthese different things.
And I think that allows you toask the right questions with
(20:45):
candidates and make Sure, thatyou're really doing your due
diligence, and that's what'sgoing to elevate you, right?
Like anybody can ask, oh, do youknow this or do you know that?
But then being able to ask thefollow-up question and the
follow-up question and really beable to like pull that onion
layer back and understand what agood answer looks like, what a
bad answer looks like, that'swhat's going to elevate you.
And then you can influence thebusiness, being like, hey, I
talked to this individual, likemaybe they don't have this, or
(21:06):
maybe they don't quite havethis.
But as I dug into XYZ, I reallyhad a great understanding of
their background and whatthey've done.
And they definitely know whatthey're talking about because
and you can start to relate allthese different things together
and pull from here and pull fromthere.
And it shows one that you're youare an expert to the hiring
manager, two, you're giving thecandidate a better opportunity
to win.
Because if you're spending thetime with the candidate and
you're having theseconversations, like you don't
(21:26):
want to just send your notes andbe done with it and not push
back, right?
If you truly know what you'retalking about and understand
your positions, you can pushback and you can make the most
of every conversation and makeyourself more effective from
that standpoint as well.
And I think that can alsoelevate recruiters quite a bit.
SPEAKER_00 (21:41):
Yeah.
I think that I think it's reallyimportant, probably a very
important part of like who youare now in terms of NTA ops,
coming from a background whereyou did so much hands-on
recruiting.
Yeah.
Oh, absolutely.
Because I understand how youthink about like building
systems, right?
SPEAKER_01 (21:57):
Yeah.
And it's crazy too, because Imean, man, if I had the things
that recruiters have nowadays,when I was a recruiter back in
the day, it would be such agreat time because there's so
many amazing tools.
I mean, so much right now thatjust elevates recruiters and the
amount of time they get to spendon all those administrative
tasks, like it's been reducedby, gosh, I don't even know how
much.
But you know, it's crazy to meto think like the opportunity
(22:18):
that these recruiters havenowadays and how they can really
elevate themselves and spend thetime doing the fun things, in my
opinion.
Like spending the time with thecandidates, spending the time of
the higher managers, like that'sthe fun piece.
You can automate sourcing andinbound applicant review and
even initial round of interviewsand things that nowadays.
And I think that really allowsrecruiters to immerse themselves
into the other pieces, andthat's what's the fun part to
(22:38):
me.
SPEAKER_00 (22:39):
But yeah, no, for sure.
Yeah, it's super important.
I think too, just uh having donelike executive search and a
sales-bent kind of backgroundand really understanding
storytelling and uncovering painpoints and understanding how to
present value propositions andcommunicating at that level of
nuance, right?
And then bringing that into a TAops motion.
(23:00):
Like another huge part of yourlife, right?
Like you said, you're a fatherof five.
Uh you know, uh, you gotteenagers now.
So, how do you think that that'sinfluenced who you've become as
a uh professional right now inyour prime?
Lots of experience.
You've been through ups anddowns, I'm sure, in in tech.
And I'm curious just how that'simpacted or maybe shifted your
perspective on building teamsand hiring.
SPEAKER_01 (23:23):
Yeah, I think it probably impacts some of the
ways that I manage, right?
Like family is extremelyimportant to me.
It's number one.
I always try to give my peoplespace.
Like if they need to take sometime for something or they have
something come up.
Like I'm always, you know,obviously, I understand, right?
Like I understand what they'regoing through, understand those
needs.
I'm very empathetic to that andwant people to take their time
and focus on the things thatmatter most.
And because if you're worryingabout your family and you're
(23:44):
worrying about the things athome, it's gonna affect your
work life when you have thatlevel of stress because you can
take care of the things that youneed to take care of at home.
I think it actually allows youto do a better job in your
day-to-day because you don'thave that in the back of your
mind.
So I think for me, just havingthat empathy and that
understanding and knowing thatthings come up or people need to
go do this or go and do that,that's totally fine.
For me, it's like as long asyou're doing your job, I don't
(24:05):
care how necessarily you'redoing it.
If you need to leave for a fewhours every day and come back
and do some stuff at night, aslong as it's getting done and
it's getting done well, likethat's that's what matters at
the end of the day.
And obviously, that's maybe alittle different for recruiters
versus like someone inoperations versus somebody in
coordination, but as muchflexibility that I can give, I
think, is key to making surethat people are happy.
And I think it's worked welltoo, because looking at my
(24:25):
teams, I've had a team of like55 and other places I've had
teams of 10, 15 or whateverplus.
And I don't really have peoplethat leave my team.
People typically are trying tolike get on my team.
And I think it's the way that Ilead, and people understand that
I'm an empathetic leader and I'msomebody that leads by example.
And I do try to truly givepeople as much opportunity for
success.
And I I'm not scared of otherpeople's success.
(24:45):
I value growing other people andseeing them be successful.
And that's it what excites me.
Now, I've had success as anindividual contributor, I've
been there, done that, and so Iwant to see how I can help other
people and how I can elevateother people, and that's really
what brings me the most joy andI see the most value.
And that's what kind of keeps megetting up every day.
Is like, how can I elevate theseother people and make their
lives a little better?
And how can I see their careersgrow?
And that's I don't know, that'sjust what excites me now.
SPEAKER_00 (25:07):
So as a leader, it's like essentially part of your
value system, is it's likehelping your team elevate uh
become the best versions ofthemselves professionally and
and personally, you're talkingabout the whole person, and so
providing that level offlexibility and trust, right?
SPEAKER_01 (25:24):
Like to recruit recruiting is an art form too,
right?
Like sure people have differentways of doing it, and you know,
I don't want to ever stiflesomebody's way of doing
something.
And so when I was a recruitingmanager or director, I would
always tell people, like, look,you can try to do things your
way.
And if you have a certain wayyou like to do things, that's
totally great.
And we can go and you can dothat as long as you want, as
(25:45):
long as it's working.
But if things start to changeand maybe it's not working, then
y'all need to step in a littlebit and kind of maybe give some
advice and guide you a littlebit more.
But I want to give you thatfreedom to go out and do things
the way that you see fit withinthe guidelines that we've built.
And I think that helps becauseyou don't want to like
pigeonhole people into a box ofhow to do things or how to
operate because not everybody'sthe same, right?
And so I think giving thatflexibility is really important.
SPEAKER_00 (26:07):
I think so.
I I think flexibility isimportant in terms of in terms
of how folks operate in theirroles.
Sometimes it's a tough balanceto find, I think.
Um, even for me at this point,I've been leading managing for a
decade.
So I've been doing it a while,and I think over time, like you
start to dial in on it.
(26:28):
Definitely, but I think the mainreason for that is buy-in to the
extent that I I feel like I'vebeen able to be flexible as a
leader allows people moreownership of like work product
and outcomes.
Because what I want to avoid isfolks feeling like, well, I I
couldn't have produced thisoutcome because I wasn't able to
do it.
(26:48):
And I think it's like 100%.
I might have experience in therole, but I also like they're
hands-on in it in the moment,and things evolve and things
change, and maybe I don'tunderstand 100%.
And there's some things everyonce in a while where I'm like,
no, like I just know that thisis the way that we have to do
it.
But generally, more times thannot, I I try to give that space.
(27:09):
And I've worked with leadersthat they want everything very
uniform and just on therecruiting side incredibly
metric driven.
Uh for me, for instance, justlike on recruiters, I've seen
recruiters that do very lowvolume, they don't do a lot of
outreach, they have greatnumbers in terms of hires and
quality of hire.
I got other recruiters that makecrush at volume and they're
doing high volume and they do agreat job and get great
(27:31):
outcomes.
I'm usually less concerned.
Where I also align with you isif there's a challenge, if
something's not going well, thenI step in and it's like, okay,
well, now we need process, weneed to kind of be a little bit
more regimented and thisapproach, at least until we can
get back on track.
I would say like leveragingpeople's creative side too,
leveraging their own experiencesand differences.
(27:54):
I think it's overall a goodthing.
And it just I think folks arejust generally more passionate
and excited about.
And I don't want to be that bosswhere somebody doesn't, frankly,
somebody doesn't hit a goal andthey're like, Well, if my my
freaking boss had me doing it.
Now I was like, Well, hey, ifyou don't hit your goal, that's
on you.
It's not on me.
SPEAKER_01 (28:12):
Like, hey, we'll we'll try your way for as long
as we can until we have to dosomething different, right?
SPEAKER_00 (28:16):
Right.
Yeah, yeah, it's messed around.
But um, well, okay, like on theon the leadership side though,
because I mean, yeah, you'vebeen now, well, first off, you
had your your dad as a mentorwho was a leader at his own
company, so you got to see thatat a very early age, which is
like I think a great formativeexperience.
Maybe we go back there.
What else did you learn aboutleadership and just ownership,
right?
If he's a business owner,there's a high level of personal
accountability there.
(28:36):
What what else did you learnabout like just leadership and
management and personalaccountability, that kind of
thing, just growing up with yourdad as a as a business owner in
the recruiting space.
And I'm just curious to see howelse that impacts how you lead
and think about your job today.
SPEAKER_01 (28:51):
Yeah, I'm gonna think about that.
So I mean, I think seeing my dadown his own business, it was if
you're not being successful likeeat on eat, right?
I think I learned very quicklyof it's like it's up to me to be
successful and make sure thatI'm doing the things I need to
do to provide for my family.
And there's no excuses, you justget it done, right?
And so for me, like failure wasnever an option.
It's like I'm gonna go in andI'm gonna do something, I'm
(29:12):
gonna do it, I'm gonna figureout how to do it well, I'm gonna
overcome whatever it is that I'mfacing and I'm gonna be
successful.
And I've kind of taken thatmindset into every job that I've
had.
One thing my dad used to alwaystell me too is like always do
the job that you have reallywell to get to the job that you
want, right?
And so if you're thinking aboutthe next job and you're trying
to like you're thinking too muchabout that, and you're maybe not
doing the current job that youhave as well, like you're not
(29:34):
gonna get to that next job.
So crush what you have, lookahead to the future, understand
what are things that you canstart to do to get you ready for
that next job and start to dothose regardless of having that
role or not.
And I think that's also helpedme in my career because I've
always um been able to do whatI've done really well, kind of
hone that, and then start tosay, okay, where can I take on
more?
Like, how can I be better?
How can I bring more value tothe organization?
(29:54):
And also to, I think um, onething that he kind of taught me
early on was try to bring valueto an organization as a whole,
not just to your own self oryour own team, right?
So it's like, okay, if I'mthinking of a problem that I'm
having as like a recruiter, forexample, how do I solve that
problem for the organizationcompany wide versus just myself
or just my team, right?
And so thinking bigger andthinking broader, um, I think
(30:15):
has helped me grow and expeditemy career because I'm not
thinking my vision is much morewidespread, I guess, if that
makes sense.
SPEAKER_00 (30:21):
Yeah, it's like the whole seeing the forest through
the tree.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I think that's I thinkthat can be really challenging
for people.
I've even worked with like greatrecruiters that sometimes folks
just have uh they're I thinkit's it's there's like two
things, right?
It's like self-awareness isreally important, and then just
I don't know what you want tocall it, like organizational
awareness, or um yeah, youreally need to understand what
(30:44):
the company's trying toaccomplish.
Exactly.
What you know, what is your CEOtrying to accomplish, the board,
the investors, like what is andit's interesting.
A lot of folks out there don'treally know what the company
they work for, like what theirnorth star is.
SPEAKER_01 (30:57):
That's very true.
Like that's you hit the null.
That is very true.
It's surprising sometimes.
SPEAKER_00 (31:02):
Right.
So I mean, I uh my girlfriendactually recently started a new
job.
And of course, I'm a businessowner, and I've always thinking
of just different kind ofquestions, and my lens of
interview questions is usuallyvery different than a lot of
people.
Like, I really okay.
What is the president trying toaccomplish?
What are they doing, and what'stheir goal?
What are the challenges?
What are the gaps?
How does your role play intothat?
(31:23):
Right?
And what can you do to helpthem?
I mean, not even thinking aboutit in terms of a JD, uh, it's
just like like how can you comein and solve for that?
Like, how can you help thepresident accomplish that goal?
SPEAKER_01 (31:35):
Right?
Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00 (31:36):
And I think just like she had a conversation with
the president on her first orsecond day, just saying, Hey, I
just want to make sure I have areally clear understanding of
what you're looking toaccomplish what the company is,
and then what your point ofimpact is within that plan to
make that happen, just so I Ican operate as effectively as
possible in my role.
And of course, the guy, yeah, heloved that.
Yeah, of course.
SPEAKER_01 (31:58):
You're trying to help me solve my problems,
right?
SPEAKER_00 (31:59):
Yeah.
Um, like, wow, it's a reallygreat.
So, I mean, I think like justyeah, being able to see the
bigger picture and I mean, therewas like there's been times in
my career, particularly in theearlier days of Secure Vision,
which my company, it's anembedded recruiting firm for the
tech industry.
And uh, I've been doing it for adecade and worked with hundreds
of tech companies, right?
And in the earlier days when Iwas more hands-on and building
(32:23):
myself out, there would beengagements where my initial
point of impact was as arecruiter, if it was like a
growth stage SaaS company, butin three to six months, I mean,
I was really part of thestrategic leadership team.
Yeah, uh driving evengo-to-market decisions and
strategy and contract strategiesand all these different things,
(32:44):
just because you're i I alwaysfortunately, I suppose, just had
the mindset of going in andfiguring out, look, well, how do
I just I just want to make thiscompany successful?
You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01 (32:55):
Like, and I think that that mindset is just it's
so you know, it's funny too yousaid that because I think that's
also kind of helped me havingthat mindset, like similar
mindset to what you justdescribed, and coming into
companies like Indeed andZendesk and Activision.
How do I think outside of myrole and bring value at a much
larger level?
I was constantly thinking aboutdifferent things.
Like even at Indeed, forexample, I was lucky enough to
have the opportunity to helplaunch multiple products because
(33:17):
Indeed was a recruiting company,right?
And they were building tools andproducts for recruiters outside
of, you know, and not justcandidates.
And so that was really excitingto me.
It was like, how can I bringvalue and working with product
managers and being like, hey,like we could do this or we
could do that, and thinkingabout how they could go to
market with the tool.
And I did some proof of conceptsfor some different things and
helped launch products.
And and I just love that aspectof it.
It was a ton of fun.
(33:37):
But it's like you said elevatingyour thinking to that company
level and understanding wherecan I bring more value outside
of just my role or how do I bemore of a strategic thought
partner than just doing what I'mdoing right now?
Or not that you're not a thoughtthought or that I'm not a
thought partner, but you know,how do I continue to elevate
myself essentially?
SPEAKER_00 (33:51):
Yeah, I think it's like for moving up and being a
good leader and being able to beeven in a position to lead, it's
executing on your coreresponsibilities, right?
Yeah.
And it's leveling up in terms ofcan I always add more value than
what's expected, right?
Like exactly.
100%.
Are those the most importantthings when it comes to
professional growth and success?
Or anything.
SPEAKER_01 (34:12):
I feel I mean, yeah, they're definitely up there.
If not, if not one of the mostimportant, or if not the most
important, one of the mostimportant, because I think
that's that's what elevatespeople from being good to great,
right?
There's a lot of good people outthere, but how do you become
great?
How do you become a differencemaker?
And that's where you really wantto be is it's some that this
person's involved with theproject, like they're gonna make
a difference, they're gonnaelevate it, they're gonna think
of things that everyone elseisn't thinking of.
(34:32):
That's how you want other peopleto perceive you and help you
personally grow and things likethat.
SPEAKER_00 (34:37):
Yeah, yeah.
I'm curious too, when you lookat your career now and where
you're at, how do you thinkabout the future and uh
breakthroughs you want to make?
Like, how do you think aboutelevating your own game to the
next level and continuouslyadding more value to the
organization as an operator forsuch a successful company and
somebody who's grown a lotprofessionally and a very
impactful role, right?
(34:57):
Um what's the next level looklike for you?
Because other operators aretuning in, right?
Folks in similar roles.
And I think it'd be reallyvaluable to get a sense for how
you think about your ownprofessional development and
progression and how you're gonnacontinue to evolve.
SPEAKER_01 (35:10):
Yeah, I think for me, and thinking about where I'm
at now, where things are going,where the future of town
acquisition is going, I reallythink understanding how to use
AI and use AI effectively isreally one of the most important
skills.
I think companies are gonnastart to move to more
skills-based hiring versus wherethey're at now.
And I'm not saying that you knowthey're gonna have like skills
marketplaces within companies,but you know, AI and
(35:32):
understanding how to prompt welland things like that is gonna
level the playing field quite abit, right?
And so once you start to levelthat playing field, it's like,
how do I learn, A, positionmyself, be able to do that, and
then where can I grow and addvalue kind of outside of that?
And so I think understanding AI,understanding out how to use it
effectively, how to elevate yourteams to use it effectively,
like that's gonna be thedifference maker moving forward
(35:52):
because people that understandhow to use AI are gonna replace
people that don't understand howto use AI.
And companies are gonna belooking for that skill set
moving forward.
And somebody that has the samelevel of skill, but one
understands AI deeply and knowshow to build agents.
My team's building agents, forexample.
One of the associates on myteam, really fantastic.
Like she's she's great.
She built an AI agent to notonly build job descriptions with
(36:15):
the Zendesk feel to it, but thenalso creates interview questions
that are tied into skills andexperience-based questions.
And so the hiring manager comesin, they can build the job
description, they can get allthe questions for interviews,
standardize it, have it builtout, and so things like that,
right?
And and that's gonna be thedifference maker, um, I think
moving forward is reallyunderstanding how to use AI.
I'm doing everything I can to bea prompt expert and understand
(36:36):
how to leverage it and reallycontinue my learning in that
segment because that's where Isee the most opportunity to move
the meter and the people thatyou know that aren't adapting
are gonna be left behind.
Like I'm just it just is what itis, you know?
SPEAKER_00 (36:48):
Yeah, yeah.
That's um and and this kind ofleads into our rapid fire
questions, the very first one,which I already feel like I have
a sense for your thoughts on thefirst one.
But curious to probably there'ssome nuance here.
Um, but I'd be curious to getyour thoughts on.
Um will AI replace recruiters?
SPEAKER_01 (37:03):
No.
I think again, kind of to what Ijust said, recruiters that
understand how to use AIeffectively will start to
replace recruiters who don't.
And that will be the people thatare going to be elevated and do
the best jobs, are gonna be theones that understand how to get
more out of their day with doingless work.
And I think it kind of goes backto the moniker of work smarter,
not harder, right?
I want you to be as effective aspossible without having to kill
yourself trying to do it.
(37:25):
For sure.
SPEAKER_00 (37:26):
Yeah.
And maybe this also what we werejust talking about feeds into
your next answer.
But um, to this next question,what's a skill every recruiter
will need five years from now?
SPEAKER_01 (37:35):
Prompt engineering, AI literacy.
SPEAKER_00 (37:38):
Got it.
SPEAKER_01 (37:39):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (37:40):
What's the biggest bottleneck in hiring today?
SPEAKER_01 (37:43):
I would say hiring manager capacity, honestly.
Nowadays it's so much easier tofind candidates, source
candidates, have conversations.
There's even AI interviewingproducts nowadays.
And the ability to find,identify, and speak to
candidates is much easier.
But what we don't necessarilyhave more of is hiring managers
or hiring manager time.
A lot of companies have thesemassive goals and they want to
make all these hires, but whenit comes down to it, it's just
(38:05):
simple math.
It's like, okay, if it's fiveinterviews or three interviews
to a hire and you got to make 10hires, I mean we have to have
time for 50 interviews.
These interviews are an hourapiece.
Do your hiring managers have 50hours to do these interviews to
make these hires in by the Xamount of allotted time?
And a lot of times an answer isno.
So I think uh hiring managercapacity would be my answer.
SPEAKER_00 (38:22):
I think that's probably one of the biggest
mistakes I see companies makewhen they're defining their
hiring point.
SPEAKER_01 (38:29):
Yeah, 100%.
SPEAKER_00 (38:31):
What's one change that would instantly improve
candidate experience?
SPEAKER_01 (38:35):
So this might be controversial, but I think I
actually think the uh AIautomated interview tools is
going to help quite a bit.
And I'll tell you why.
Right now we only have so muchtime in the day.
It's hard to review a ton ofresumes.
And so having the ability togive more people an opportunity
for success and a chance at therole, I think will improve
candidate experience because alot of people are getting
(38:57):
ghosted nowadays.
They don't necessarily get aresponse from a recruiter, they
don't get a response from theteam, or maybe they do, but they
don't actually talk to anybody.
And so, at least with an AIinterview tool, they're at least
getting an opportunity to speaktheir experience, to talk about
what they've done and give themat least a shot for success.
And so I think for me, if I wasa candidate, I would much rather
have an AI interview than haveno interview at all.
(39:18):
And so I think as companiesstart to adopt that and tech
companies start to adopt that,we'll see a higher candidate
experience from that.
SPEAKER_00 (39:25):
What's the best piece of career or leadership
advice you've ever received?
SPEAKER_01 (39:29):
I would say um you can never go wrong hiring great
people.
And I think that's very true.
And there's definitely beentimes in my career where I've
hired people with moreexperience with really strong
backgrounds, and instead ofbeing intimidated by that, I'm
excited by it, right?
And it gives me an opportunityto potentially learn from them
and allows them to elevate otherpeople on the team.
And I think that's why my teamshave had success because I'm not
(39:51):
intimidated.
I want to hire great people, andthat's okay if you have more
experience than me or more, youknow, whatever.
Welcome that and I appreciatethat.
SPEAKER_00 (39:57):
I love it.
Awesome.
Well, Everett, we're uh runningout of time.
It's been great to be able tohost you on the show.
This has been really enjoyable.
Um, and I I think uh it's gonnabe a hit.
I think people are really gonnaenjoy this one.
Um, thank you so much tocontributing to the show and our
community.
SPEAKER_01 (40:14):
Well, thanks for having me.
I'm glad to be here and glad toshare my experience.
And uh, this has been fun.
So thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (40:18):
Yeah, it's been a great time.
Hey, today we have Everett Chaffin on the show.
He is the director of global TAoperations and programs for
Zendesk, and we have reallyexciting things to talk about.
So, Everett, thanks for joiningme on the show.
SPEAKER_01 (00:58):
Yeah, thanks for having me, James.
I really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00 (01:00):
Yeah, of course.
To start us off, we want tolearn more about you, uh a
little bit about just who youare.
Could you share a little bit?
SPEAKER_01 (01:07):
Yeah, sure.
So um, father of five, live inTexas currently, and uh I think
what makes me kind of unique inthe recruiting space is that
I've actually known I was gonnabe a recruiter since I was a
young kid, right?
My my dad started owning anagency back in 1998, and I grew
up going to work with my dad.
He owned video stores beforethat.
So I grew up going to work withhim, and then when he moved into
recruiting, um kind of the samething was going to work with him
(01:29):
before school, coming over afterschool, and really seeing how
you know how he did his job andwhat that entailed.
And at a young age, I'm like, Ithink I can do this.
And my dad would actually giveme tasks to do at a young age to
try to like source candidates.
Of course, this is 98.
There is no LinkedIn.
You're looking at company listsor you know, trying to just find
companies online in any waypossible using old search
companies.
(01:50):
And at one point, he actuallygave me a CFO search and he was
just trying to keep meentertained and you know, not
bothering him essentially.
I was like, look, if you canfind me three candidates, I'll
talk with them if any of themmake sense.
And if you know somebody getshired, I'll give them or I'll
buy you a go-kart.
Thinking, of course, that Iwould never have any kind of
shot at actually accomplishingthat.
I ended up finding threecandidates, presented to my dad
(02:11):
these candidates.
He liked one of the candidates,reaches out, and no joke, this
guy turned out to be the guy whomarried the CFO at his wedding
like five years prior.
They were like best friends andthey had fallen out of contact
and were like, oh my gosh, likeI love this guy.
Like, I can't believe I didn'tthink about him for the role.
And it got all the way throughthis through the whole interview
process.
He got an offer, and then itturned out this guy tried to
(02:32):
double dip on a bonus and hisfriend found out, and so they
ended up taking away the offer.
But I was hooked.
I was like, okay, like if I if Icould do this at 12, I can do
this for a career.
And so at that early age of 12,I knew I was going to be a
recruiter and it really kind ofshaped the way that I was moving
forward in my life because I'mlike, this is what I want to do.
And so I was always trying tolearn from my dad and always
trying to listen toconversations and really
(02:52):
understand what made himsuccessful.
And I think that really helpedcatapult me into uh into my
career.
SPEAKER_00 (02:57):
You might be the only guest that I've had that
knew they wanted to get intorecruitment when they were a
kid.
I think like everybody was justlike, like most people, I didn't
realize I was gonna end up inrecruiting.
SPEAKER_01 (03:08):
Yeah, most people just fall into it.
Like I don't think it's notnormally like a family business.
It's actually kind of funnybecause I have other parts of my
family outside of my dad's sidewho are also recruiters and have
owned recruiting agencies foryou know 20 plus years.
So just for whatever reason, myfamily has a a lot of recruiters
in it.
SPEAKER_00 (03:24):
Yeah, that's great.
That's great.
So when you became an adult,right, and you grew up, was your
first full-time recruiting jobat your family's company?
SPEAKER_01 (03:34):
It was, yeah.
Yeah.
So I did um executive retainedsearch for three and a half
years and I cut my teeth in therenewable, renewable energy
industry.
So working on, you know, solarmanufacturers, a large uh EPC,
so engineering procurement,construction companies that were
building massive wind farms andsolar farms and things like
that.
And you know, was working, likeI said, at an executive level
very early on.
(03:55):
And I think that kind of helpedme understand that recruiting is
about people, not intimidation.
And you can build strongrelationships with really
high-level executives, and youdon't have to be afraid of, oh,
this person's a CEO or thisperson's a you know VP
somewhere.
Everyone's just people at theend of the day.
And if you know you do goodwork, like you'll be you'll be
just fine.
You don't need to have that likeintimidation factor.
SPEAKER_00 (04:12):
Yeah, for sure, for sure.
And so now fast forward, you'reover at Zendesk and you're based
in uh Austin, is that right?
SPEAKER_01 (04:19):
Yeah, I'm a little little town outside of Austin.
SPEAKER_00 (04:21):
Oh, cool.
SPEAKER_01 (04:22):
So are you from Austin for about 20 years?
SPEAKER_00 (04:25):
Oh, okay.
Where are you from initially?
SPEAKER_01 (04:26):
Uh Sacramento.
SPEAKER_00 (04:28):
Sacramento?
SPEAKER_01 (04:29):
Yes.
I spent about the first 20 yearsin Sacramento and then the the
last 20 years uh in and aroundAustin, essentially.
SPEAKER_00 (04:34):
Okay.
All right.
So you move out to Austin forwork or yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (04:38):
Um well, I wanted to kind of change things up.
I was living in California andit's just so expensive in
California.
And you know, Austin's kind ofhaving a tech scene that was
starting to emerge, and I feltlike a good chance to come out
and check out somethingdifferent.
My mom's family is in Texas, andso I wanted to just kind of have
a change of scenery and came outhere and actually joined a
recruiting agency called the HTGroup.
I was there for about a year,and that's kind of my first jump
(05:00):
into tech.
And it was tech manufacturingwas a little bit different, and
uh did that for a year, and thenluckily actually Indeed reached
out to me at the time.
They had a recruiting role, anduh they were based here in
Austin, and so I ended upinterviewing with them and
joining Indeed, and Indeed atthat time was about maybe 800
globally.
When I left Indeed, there wasabout 12,000 employees.
So I got in at a very early timeand was there for seven years
(05:22):
and really saw that grow andturn into just a massive
company, which was just anamazing experience in general.
SPEAKER_00 (05:28):
Yeah.
And now you're at Zendesk andyou're balancing uh working at a
category defining leading techcompany, and you have five kids
at the same time.
I don't I don't know how you youpull that off.
SPEAKER_01 (05:41):
That's uh I have an amazing wife and it definitely
helps.
And my kids are great too.
Like I really do have good kids.
I'm pretty blessed.
That's awesome.
SPEAKER_00 (05:48):
What's what's the age range in in your kids?
SPEAKER_01 (05:50):
Like, yeah, so I have um almost two-year-old, and
then I have a nine-year-old, aten-year-old, a
thirteen-year-old, and afifteen-year-old.
SPEAKER_00 (05:56):
That's a pretty good spread right there.
SPEAKER_01 (05:57):
Yeah.
And it's nice because the olderones, you know, help the younger
ones.
And so it's not just like mywife and I, right?
Like, we do have the extra thehelp and support.
And luckily, my parents movedfrom California and just live
right down the street from me aswell.
So it's, you know, we have thatextra um kind of built-in
babysitting as well.
SPEAKER_00 (06:12):
Yeah, that's nice.
That is nice.
That helps a lot.
Um so hey, so at Zendesk rightnow, so director of global TA
operations programs andexecutive recruiting sounds like
funnels up into you as well.
Could you just give us anoverview on exactly what your
role is and maybe how the talentacquisition team is uh built
(06:35):
within the company so we just wecan understand your point of
impact a little better?
SPEAKER_01 (06:38):
Yeah, absolutely.
So essentially I own like alltools, systems, vendors,
enablement, global coordination,early careers, executive
recruiting, internal mobility,um, essentially kind of
everything that helps make thetalent acquisition team operate.
And then outside of like theactual delivery, I have a uh a
boss, a leader who owns kind ofall the that that delivery side
(07:01):
of things, and then I owneverything else to essentially
help make sure that our teamsare as efficient as possible.
My real goal and the thing thatI'm working on is how do I or
how do we get more out of whatwe have, right?
And how do we make people moreefficient?
How do we make them betterrecruiters and really elevate
them to talent advisors, right?
Because that's I think the key,right?
Anybody can be a recruiter, butyou know, not everybody can be a
talent advisor.
(07:21):
And so how do we give them theopportunity and the space to do
that?
And so part of that from my sideof things is how do we make them
more efficient?
So it's looking at differenttools, essentially artificial
intelligence, right, AI, andunderstanding how we can
incorporate that into ourday-to-day to free up time for
the things that are moreimportant that allow us to have
a better hiring managerexperience, a better candidate
experience.
So I'll give you an example.
So one of the things that Ithink was pretty impactful
(07:43):
recently that um we incorporatedwas actually a inbound applicant
review, like scoring system.
And so essentially, if you thinkabout it, we have over a
thousand people that we'rehiring on a yearly basis.
We have hundreds of recs open atkind of any one time, and we're
getting a very large qual orquantity of candidates that are
coming in inbound to our recs.
(08:03):
The best recruiter on a good daymight be taking 15 to 30 seconds
to review a resume, in somecases, maybe as much as a
minute, right?
We had 140,000 resumes that camethrough this tool that we were
able to rank and rate andbasically sort based on you know
fit according to the jobdescription.
And then the must-haves and nicehaves that we even put into the
large language model.
And so when you think about thetime savings for something like
(08:25):
that, 140,000 resumes, even 30seconds, that's you know 70,000
minutes.
How many months of time is that?
And things like that, and tryingto understand what are the use
cases for AI within recruitingand how do I continue to
increase the efficiency of ourteam because budgets aren't
necessarily changing, right?
So how do we increase what ourteams can do without majorly
changing the budget?
And that's kind of where my mainfocus is right now, and trying
(08:47):
to understand holistically whereelse we can use AI.
SPEAKER_00 (08:50):
So that's interesting because also, I
mean, uh that coupled withexecutive recruiting, how did
that Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (08:57):
So right now, the way that we are doing executive
recruiting is more of a program.
So it's more of like a whiteglove approach.
We do heavily use vendors andagencies at this time.
Um, and so it's managing thoseagencies and making sure that
things are going well, kind ofcoupled also with like
scheduling and candidateexperience.
And so we've built out a programthat essentially allows not only
candidates that are comingthrough an agency, but also
(09:17):
candidates that are comingthrough our own internal teams
to have the same experience thatexecutives can always know that
they're gonna have the samestandardized experience and
really allow us to make surethat for everything is moving
very smoothly for all partiesinvolved.
And so that's kind of where itis right now, and that is
continuing to evolve, and Icould see that going a couple
different ways.
But the main thing was justmaking sure that we standardized
stuff for kind of everybody andhad a really great experience,
(09:39):
all the information, smoothprocess, quick responses, and
things like that.
SPEAKER_00 (09:44):
So, how do you go about identifying the biggest
pain points in terms ofoptimizing through tech?
I mean, is it like are youconstantly having conversations
with I suppose it's on the townacquisition side, but probably
also on the hiring manager side.
What's your process ofessentially analyzing and
figuring out what to moveforward with, what type of tech
(10:05):
to move forward with?
SPEAKER_01 (10:06):
Yeah, absolutely.
At the end of the day, therecruiting team is my customer,
right?
It's not what I think is themost effective or efficient or
you know, what I think would bethe best tool.
It's really, you know, I reallywant the recruiters to drive the
things that have value and whatthey're trying to do.
And so it's having a lot ofconversations with the
recruiters, with the recruitingmanagers and understanding like,
what are the things that aretaking the most amount of time
for you?
Where are the opportunities tobe more effective?
(10:28):
You know, what can we do toelevate the team and really get
them in the spot where they cando more with what they have and
not lose any of that candidateexperience or really even
increase the candidateexperience because they do have
more time to spend withcandidates or to spend with
hiring managers.
And so that's kind of from therecruiting side of things.
And then when I first joinedfirst joined the company, there
wasn't really anystandardization from the hiring
(10:48):
manager side of things.
And so the processes were notI'm saying disready or something
like that, but there wasn't astandardized process.
There was really nothing butstandardized.
Reporting wasn't standardized orany of that.
And so working with the businessto understand what their pain
points were, where they saw thebiggest opportunities for
success and to come in.
And there's a lot of low-hangingfruit, essentially.
And so the first kind of let'ssay eight to ten months or so
(11:09):
was standardizing interviews,standardizing reporting, going
and working with all thedifferent finance groups, with
the different leaders,understanding what views they
wanted to see.
Because I also have built outlike all the reporting and
everything.
Essentially, like all everythingthat I'm trying to do is for the
business or for the recruiters.
And so I work very heavily withwhatever group that I'm
supporting to make sure thatwhatever a tool or situation I'm
doing that the outcome is goingto meet their needs.
SPEAKER_00 (11:30):
Okay, so you've had a really interesting career,
right?
And I I think it's pretty coolthat it started when you were 12
also.
So you actually got like yourlot more experience than most
people your age, right?
You started off on the agencyside, but what's cool is like
you start off in very early, itsounded like more executive
search, and then you've been atreally hyper growth uh
(11:53):
organizations, like Indeedsounds like it was scaling to an
insane extent while you werethere.
And now you're at Zendesk,right?
Which most folks, particularlytech, are very familiar with,
and you're on the kind ofsystems side, right?
Um so you have a reallyinteresting, I think,
perspective and and uhexperience that I'd say a lot of
(12:13):
TA leaders haven't been exposedto.
So I'm I'm curious, are thereany top kind of like principles
or takeaways or things thatyou've learned throughout your
career that you've when it comesto building like TA programs
that you're saying, hey, this isthe most important thing, or
what is always top of mind foryou and what are the top kind of
takeaways from your career thusfar?
SPEAKER_01 (12:32):
Is yeah, so I would say it's okay to fail, but you
want to fail fast and you wantto learn from that failure as
quickly as possible.
And like in, you know, if you'renot failing, you're not
learning, kind of a thing,right?
Like you got to try differentthings, you gotta be willing to
take some chances, but alsounderstand that not everything
is gonna work.
And so if you do need to pivotand make an adjustment, then
that's totally okay, right?
(12:53):
Um, I would say another thingtoo is that feedback is a gift,
right?
You want to have feedback.
If you're not getting feedback,then you're not gonna truly
understand where youropportunities for growth are or
how to operationalize better.
And so I'm always asking forfeedback, always wanting to know
what I can do better, how can Iadjust something to make myself
more effective.
And I think that's somethingthat's really done well in my
(13:13):
career.
And then I would say for therecruiters out there, become a
storyteller.
Don't just be some that'spitching something.
Like being a storyteller willreally help sell opportunity and
really tie together theopportunity and the experience.
And so you can really increaseyour ability to attract
top-level candidates and havereally great conversations and
truly understand what people areabout and not just checking some
boxes on a paper and hoping thatthe person's interested.
(13:36):
Because if the person is notbought into you and bought into
the company, you're just anotherperson.
But if they feel connected toyou and they feel like you've
built this connection, likethey're less likely to ghost
you, they're less likely toprobably turn down your your
offer.
And historically, like my teamshave had in the high 90s offer
acceptance rates.
And when I was a recruiter, Iwas in like the 99% acceptance
rate because people felt like wewere friends, right?
And it wasn't that it wasdisingenuous.
(13:56):
Like I was friends with a lot ofthese candidates, but you know,
I built a relationship with themand I I understood who they were
and where they were coming fromand really tied that to the
opportunity at hand and how thatcould really tie into the things
like maybe they didn't have agood work-life balance and they
wanted to spend more time withtheir family, or maybe they were
struggling and they needed moremoney, and that would really
kind of help their quality oflife.
And so it was understanding thepain points of candidates, I
(14:16):
think, really um and how thatties into what you're offering
them, really will help you besuccessful as a recruiter.
SPEAKER_00 (14:22):
I think storytelling is incredibly important.
And I'm curious, I think the waywhat you're saying is that
understanding their pain pointsand the storytelling is also
like essentially it's part oftelling the story, right?
Because you want to be able tohighlight essentially what's
really important to thecandidate.
So let me just I'm gonna explainand see if you could tell me if
I'm thinking about this theright way.
(14:43):
Okay.
Um, or like for instance, ifthey're focused on work-life
balance, then you would probablyfocus more on the cultural
aspects of potentiallyboundaries or scope or the
communication style uh of likeleadership about communicating,
what's expected within whattimeline.
And um, and that's more of thestory that you tell.
(15:05):
It's just like deciding what toemphasize and focus on when
you're is that what you're yeah,I think you know I think you hit
the nail on the head, right?
SPEAKER_01 (15:13):
It's yeah, understanding how what your
value prop is to their problem,right?
And so how can you best sell orhow can you best alleviate
whatever issue that they hadwith what you're selling?
Because at the end of the day,recruiting itself.
You're selling an opportunity,you're selling a hiring manager,
you're selling a team, andeverything is like it's like 360
sells, is what I used to say,right?
And so it's understanding,overcoming objectives and
understanding where the problemsare and how you can alleviate
(15:33):
those problems essentially withwhatever it is that you're
packaging up and giving to them.
That's kind of how how I lookedat it.
SPEAKER_00 (15:40):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (15:40):
And where did you was that like experience you
started to gain from the verybeginning working on uh working
with you You know, I think Ithink I actually got that from
my like face-to-face sales for Iworked for T-Mobile when I was
real young, um sellingsmartphones, like right when
phones and smartphones like orlike a smartphones came out,
that was what I was doing.
And I was at a mall and it waslike high touch point, and
people were trying to leave andthey weren't really trying to
(16:02):
buy something right then.
So it was like constantlyovercoming objectives and trying
to get them to that likeacceptance place, right?
And I think that really actuallyhelped shape my ability to sell
opportunities within recruiting.
It really helped me.
Like finding people was great.
I understood how to do that.
I did that a lot.
I was basically like a sorcererfor my dad growing up, right?
But actually sellingopportunities and having those
conversations, I think a lot ofthat experience came from my
(16:23):
face-to-face sales withinT-Mobile.
And one thing I think too thatalso helped kind of when I was
thinking about getting people toaccept offers, you're not always
gonna have an offer that isgoing to excite the candidate,
right?
Maybe they wanted a hundred andyou're coming in with 95 or
whatever that situation may be.
I learned very quickly that if Icame in and told them, hey,
first thing is you know, badnews, oh, you're getting 95,
(16:45):
like they're gonna be turnedoff, they're not gonna be
excited about the opportunity,and they're probably not gonna
listen to anything or having tosay after.
And you may have a lot of valueprop outside of just the base
salary.
Maybe there's unlimited timeoff, maybe there's food, or
whatever that may be.
And so I learned very quickly onoffers where the best or the
thing that I wanted to give thisperson wasn't necessarily gonna
happen.
I would start with all the otherthings first.
So they would have to listen tomy entire pitch, and then I
(17:07):
would deliver like the daysalary.
But at that point, they wouldalready be so jazzed about all
the other benefits and perks andthings that the business and the
team that they're gonna beworking on by the time I got to
oh, you're gonna be making 95,not 100.
They didn't even care.
They were already gonna acceptthe role.
And so I think it's to how youposition information to
recruiters or how you positioninformation to the business or
your team or whatever, and thatreally can change the way that
(17:29):
that information is received.
And so it's important to have apositive attitude and relay that
information in a positive wayand really think about the way
that you're giving it because itcan really greatly change the
outcome.
SPEAKER_00 (17:40):
So you feel like the like starting off in on the
sales path to like even back inthe days we were doing T Mobile
was pretty formative experiencethat potentially enabled you to
be able to see things the waythat you you do now, right?
SPEAKER_01 (17:53):
Absolutely.
100%.
And yeah.
And to even expand on that, Ihired people with zero
recruiting experience on myteam.
Like I met a guy sellingfurniture who sold me my
furniture, and he just gave methis fantastic experience.
I'm like, I think you would be agreat recruiter.
I ended up hiring him at indeed,and he absolutely crushed it.
The guy was you know, 30 years,like literally like 30 years
(18:13):
sales experience, never donerecruiting, and came in and just
absolutely blew it out of thewater.
And I did that with a fewdifferent individuals, kind of
similar backgrounds.
And so personally, my ownexperience and just what I've
seen, like people that have thatkind of sales background coming
into recruiting typically arepretty successful.
SPEAKER_00 (18:28):
Yeah, I think so.
It's like the huge behavioralelement, yeah.
Right, which is, I mean, I Ithink I see that well, it's in
every industry, but it'ssomething we talk about a lot in
tech, particularly as fast pacedas it is, and you have to be
super adaptable with recruiting.
You have to be able to connectwith people and really uncover
quickly what matters to them,right?
SPEAKER_01 (18:47):
You can't be afraid to talk to people.
I think you know, picking up thephone, I think is almost a lost
art nowadays.
I'm not saying that people don'tpick up the phone anymore, but
it's much easier and safer tosend a text message or send an
email.
But there's I think somethinglost just picking up the phone
and having a conversation withsomebody, delivering news in
that way, or just trying to geta hold of them.
It's a lost art in some ways.
(19:07):
And I think that people that arenot afraid to pick up the phone
and call someone will have a lotof success and maybe nothing
more than something that's not,but I don't know.
I think there's just there'ssomething to it.
SPEAKER_00 (19:16):
Yeah.
Well, so when you think aboutbuilding systems, right, and
tech stacks and working withyour recruiters, how do you help
them find that balance, right?
Because your part of your roleis like optimization,
automation, but from the lens,I'm assuming from enabling your
recruiters to have moreimpactful conversations.
But is there any like guidancethat you give them in terms of
(19:40):
how to think navigating that orwhere it makes sense to slow
down and making sure thatwhatever process and motion
you're building out still giveslots of space and opportunity
for your recruiters to createthose relationships?
I'm sure that that probably goesinto how you think about
building a tech stack, right?
Is optimizing for relationshipsin a sense like allowing your
recruiters to invest in those,right?
SPEAKER_01 (20:02):
Yeah, yeah.
So yeah, to your point, I'mtrying to find tools and build
systems that, again, areincreasing the capacity of our
recruiters to allow them tospend time on things like
building relationships with thehiring managers, spend more time
on an intake, truly understandthe roles, spend some time with
the team.
Like if it's a team that you'regonna be working a ton with,
like go spend some time withthem, listen to what they're
doing, understand their roles,go to their stand-ups that
(20:23):
they're within engineering,really embrace those positions
and what their roles are andwhat they're doing, and become a
subject matter expert on it sothat you can ask the right
questions.
And also you can start to learnhow to talk with the hiring
manager, how to push ondifferent things because of
experiences that you've had orthings that you've heard.
And so you start to have thisdeeper understanding and you
become a true industry expert onthese different things.
And I think that allows you toask the right questions with
(20:45):
candidates and make Sure, thatyou're really doing your due
diligence, and that's what'sgoing to elevate you, right?
Like anybody can ask, oh, do youknow this or do you know that?
But then being able to ask thefollow-up question and the
follow-up question and really beable to like pull that onion
layer back and understand what agood answer looks like, what a
bad answer looks like, that'swhat's going to elevate you.
And then you can influence thebusiness, being like, hey, I
talked to this individual, likemaybe they don't have this, or
(21:06):
maybe they don't quite havethis.
But as I dug into XYZ, I reallyhad a great understanding of
their background and whatthey've done.
And they definitely know whatthey're talking about because
and you can start to relate allthese different things together
and pull from here and pull fromthere.
And it shows one that you're youare an expert to the hiring
manager, two, you're giving thecandidate a better opportunity
to win.
Because if you're spending thetime with the candidate and
you're having theseconversations, like you don't
(21:26):
want to just send your notes andbe done with it and not push
back, right?
If you truly know what you'retalking about and understand
your positions, you can pushback and you can make the most
of every conversation and makeyourself more effective from
that standpoint as well.
And I think that can alsoelevate recruiters quite a bit.
SPEAKER_00 (21:41):
Yeah.
I think that I think it's reallyimportant, probably a very
important part of like who youare now in terms of NTA ops,
coming from a background whereyou did so much hands-on
recruiting.
Yeah.
Oh, absolutely.
Because I understand how youthink about like building
systems, right?
SPEAKER_01 (21:57):
Yeah.
And it's crazy too, because Imean, man, if I had the things
that recruiters have nowadays,when I was a recruiter back in
the day, it would be such agreat time because there's so
many amazing tools.
I mean, so much right now thatjust elevates recruiters and the
amount of time they get to spendon all those administrative
tasks, like it's been reducedby, gosh, I don't even know how
much.
But you know, it's crazy to meto think like the opportunity
(22:18):
that these recruiters havenowadays and how they can really
elevate themselves and spend thetime doing the fun things, in my
opinion.
Like spending the time with thecandidates, spending the time of
the higher managers, like that'sthe fun piece.
You can automate sourcing andinbound applicant review and
even initial round of interviewsand things that nowadays.
And I think that really allowsrecruiters to immerse themselves
into the other pieces, andthat's what's the fun part to
(22:38):
me.
SPEAKER_00 (22:39):
But yeah, no, for sure.
Yeah, it's super important.
I think too, just uh having donelike executive search and a
sales-bent kind of backgroundand really understanding
storytelling and uncovering painpoints and understanding how to
present value propositions andcommunicating at that level of
nuance, right?
And then bringing that into a TAops motion.
(23:00):
Like another huge part of yourlife, right?
Like you said, you're a fatherof five.
Uh you know, uh, you gotteenagers now.
So, how do you think that that'sinfluenced who you've become as
a uh professional right now inyour prime?
Lots of experience.
You've been through ups anddowns, I'm sure, in in tech.
And I'm curious just how that'simpacted or maybe shifted your
perspective on building teamsand hiring.
SPEAKER_01 (23:23):
Yeah, I think it probably impacts some of the
ways that I manage, right?
Like family is extremelyimportant to me.
It's number one.
I always try to give my peoplespace.
Like if they need to take sometime for something or they have
something come up.
Like I'm always, you know,obviously, I understand, right?
Like I understand what they'regoing through, understand those
needs.
I'm very empathetic to that andwant people to take their time
and focus on the things thatmatter most.
And because if you're worryingabout your family and you're
(23:44):
worrying about the things athome, it's gonna affect your
work life when you have thatlevel of stress because you can
take care of the things that youneed to take care of at home.
I think it actually allows youto do a better job in your
day-to-day because you don'thave that in the back of your
mind.
So I think for me, just havingthat empathy and that
understanding and knowing thatthings come up or people need to
go do this or go and do that,that's totally fine.
For me, it's like as long asyou're doing your job, I don't
(24:05):
care how necessarily you'redoing it.
If you need to leave for a fewhours every day and come back
and do some stuff at night, aslong as it's getting done and
it's getting done well, likethat's that's what matters at
the end of the day.
And obviously, that's maybe alittle different for recruiters
versus like someone inoperations versus somebody in
coordination, but as muchflexibility that I can give, I
think, is key to making surethat people are happy.
And I think it's worked welltoo, because looking at my
(24:25):
teams, I've had a team of like55 and other places I've had
teams of 10, 15 or whateverplus.
And I don't really have peoplethat leave my team.
People typically are trying tolike get on my team.
And I think it's the way that Ilead, and people understand that
I'm an empathetic leader and I'msomebody that leads by example.
And I do try to truly givepeople as much opportunity for
success.
And I I'm not scared of otherpeople's success.
(24:45):
I value growing other people andseeing them be successful.
And that's it what excites me.
Now, I've had success as anindividual contributor, I've
been there, done that, and so Iwant to see how I can help other
people and how I can elevateother people, and that's really
what brings me the most joy andI see the most value.
And that's what kind of keeps megetting up every day.
Is like, how can I elevate theseother people and make their
lives a little better?
And how can I see their careersgrow?
And that's I don't know, that'sjust what excites me now.
SPEAKER_00 (25:07):
So as a leader, it's like essentially part of your
value system, is it's likehelping your team elevate uh
become the best versions ofthemselves professionally and
and personally, you're talkingabout the whole person, and so
providing that level offlexibility and trust, right?
SPEAKER_01 (25:24):
Like to recruit recruiting is an art form too,
right?
Like sure people have differentways of doing it, and you know,
I don't want to ever stiflesomebody's way of doing
something.
And so when I was a recruitingmanager or director, I would
always tell people, like, look,you can try to do things your
way.
And if you have a certain wayyou like to do things, that's
totally great.
And we can go and you can dothat as long as you want, as
(25:45):
long as it's working.
But if things start to changeand maybe it's not working, then
y'all need to step in a littlebit and kind of maybe give some
advice and guide you a littlebit more.
But I want to give you thatfreedom to go out and do things
the way that you see fit withinthe guidelines that we've built.
And I think that helps becauseyou don't want to like
pigeonhole people into a box ofhow to do things or how to
operate because not everybody'sthe same, right?
And so I think giving thatflexibility is really important.
SPEAKER_00 (26:07):
I think so.
I I think flexibility isimportant in terms of in terms
of how folks operate in theirroles.
Sometimes it's a tough balanceto find, I think.
Um, even for me at this point,I've been leading managing for a
decade.
So I've been doing it a while,and I think over time, like you
start to dial in on it.
(26:28):
Definitely, but I think the mainreason for that is buy-in to the
extent that I I feel like I'vebeen able to be flexible as a
leader allows people moreownership of like work product
and outcomes.
Because what I want to avoid isfolks feeling like, well, I I
couldn't have produced thisoutcome because I wasn't able to
do it.
(26:48):
And I think it's like 100%.
I might have experience in therole, but I also like they're
hands-on in it in the moment,and things evolve and things
change, and maybe I don'tunderstand 100%.
And there's some things everyonce in a while where I'm like,
no, like I just know that thisis the way that we have to do
it.
But generally, more times thannot, I I try to give that space.
(27:09):
And I've worked with leadersthat they want everything very
uniform and just on therecruiting side incredibly
metric driven.
Uh for me, for instance, justlike on recruiters, I've seen
recruiters that do very lowvolume, they don't do a lot of
outreach, they have greatnumbers in terms of hires and
quality of hire.
I got other recruiters that makecrush at volume and they're
doing high volume and they do agreat job and get great
(27:31):
outcomes.
I'm usually less concerned.
Where I also align with you isif there's a challenge, if
something's not going well, thenI step in and it's like, okay,
well, now we need process, weneed to kind of be a little bit
more regimented and thisapproach, at least until we can
get back on track.
I would say like leveragingpeople's creative side too,
leveraging their own experiencesand differences.
(27:54):
I think it's overall a goodthing.
And it just I think folks arejust generally more passionate
and excited about.
And I don't want to be that bosswhere somebody doesn't, frankly,
somebody doesn't hit a goal andthey're like, Well, if my my
freaking boss had me doing it.
Now I was like, Well, hey, ifyou don't hit your goal, that's
on you.
It's not on me.
SPEAKER_01 (28:12):
Like, hey, we'll we'll try your way for as long
as we can until we have to dosomething different, right?
SPEAKER_00 (28:16):
Right.
Yeah, yeah, it's messed around.
But um, well, okay, like on theon the leadership side though,
because I mean, yeah, you'vebeen now, well, first off, you
had your your dad as a mentorwho was a leader at his own
company, so you got to see thatat a very early age, which is
like I think a great formativeexperience.
Maybe we go back there.
What else did you learn aboutleadership and just ownership,
right?
If he's a business owner,there's a high level of personal
accountability there.
(28:36):
What what else did you learnabout like just leadership and
management and personalaccountability, that kind of
thing, just growing up with yourdad as a as a business owner in
the recruiting space.
And I'm just curious to see howelse that impacts how you lead
and think about your job today.
SPEAKER_01 (28:51):
Yeah, I'm gonna think about that.
So I mean, I think seeing my dadown his own business, it was if
you're not being successful likeeat on eat, right?
I think I learned very quicklyof it's like it's up to me to be
successful and make sure thatI'm doing the things I need to
do to provide for my family.
And there's no excuses, you justget it done, right?
And so for me, like failure wasnever an option.
It's like I'm gonna go in andI'm gonna do something, I'm
(29:12):
gonna do it, I'm gonna figureout how to do it well, I'm gonna
overcome whatever it is that I'mfacing and I'm gonna be
successful.
And I've kind of taken thatmindset into every job that I've
had.
One thing my dad used to alwaystell me too is like always do
the job that you have reallywell to get to the job that you
want, right?
And so if you're thinking aboutthe next job and you're trying
to like you're thinking too muchabout that, and you're maybe not
doing the current job that youhave as well, like you're not
(29:34):
gonna get to that next job.
So crush what you have, lookahead to the future, understand
what are things that you canstart to do to get you ready for
that next job and start to dothose regardless of having that
role or not.
And I think that's also helpedme in my career because I've
always um been able to do whatI've done really well, kind of
hone that, and then start tosay, okay, where can I take on
more?
Like, how can I be better?
How can I bring more value tothe organization?
(29:54):
And also to, I think um, onething that he kind of taught me
early on was try to bring valueto an organization as a whole,
not just to your own self oryour own team, right?
So it's like, okay, if I'mthinking of a problem that I'm
having as like a recruiter, forexample, how do I solve that
problem for the organizationcompany wide versus just myself
or just my team, right?
And so thinking bigger andthinking broader, um, I think
(30:15):
has helped me grow and expeditemy career because I'm not
thinking my vision is much morewidespread, I guess, if that
makes sense.
SPEAKER_00 (30:21):
Yeah, it's like the whole seeing the forest through
the tree.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I think that's I thinkthat can be really challenging
for people.
I've even worked with like greatrecruiters that sometimes folks
just have uh they're I thinkit's it's there's like two
things, right?
It's like self-awareness isreally important, and then just
I don't know what you want tocall it, like organizational
awareness, or um yeah, youreally need to understand what
(30:44):
the company's trying toaccomplish.
Exactly.
What you know, what is your CEOtrying to accomplish, the board,
the investors, like what is andit's interesting.
A lot of folks out there don'treally know what the company
they work for, like what theirnorth star is.
SPEAKER_01 (30:57):
That's very true.
Like that's you hit the null.
That is very true.
It's surprising sometimes.
SPEAKER_00 (31:02):
Right.
So I mean, I uh my girlfriendactually recently started a new
job.
And of course, I'm a businessowner, and I've always thinking
of just different kind ofquestions, and my lens of
interview questions is usuallyvery different than a lot of
people.
Like, I really okay.
What is the president trying toaccomplish?
What are they doing, and what'stheir goal?
What are the challenges?
What are the gaps?
How does your role play intothat?
(31:23):
Right?
And what can you do to helpthem?
I mean, not even thinking aboutit in terms of a JD, uh, it's
just like like how can you comein and solve for that?
Like, how can you help thepresident accomplish that goal?
SPEAKER_01 (31:35):
Right?
Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00 (31:36):
And I think just like she had a conversation with
the president on her first orsecond day, just saying, Hey, I
just want to make sure I have areally clear understanding of
what you're looking toaccomplish what the company is,
and then what your point ofimpact is within that plan to
make that happen, just so I Ican operate as effectively as
possible in my role.
And of course, the guy, yeah, heloved that.
Yeah, of course.
SPEAKER_01 (31:58):
You're trying to help me solve my problems,
right?
SPEAKER_00 (31:59):
Yeah.
Um, like, wow, it's a reallygreat.
So, I mean, I think like justyeah, being able to see the
bigger picture and I mean, therewas like there's been times in
my career, particularly in theearlier days of Secure Vision,
which my company, it's anembedded recruiting firm for the
tech industry.
And uh, I've been doing it for adecade and worked with hundreds
of tech companies, right?
And in the earlier days when Iwas more hands-on and building
(32:23):
myself out, there would beengagements where my initial
point of impact was as arecruiter, if it was like a
growth stage SaaS company, butin three to six months, I mean,
I was really part of thestrategic leadership team.
Yeah, uh driving evengo-to-market decisions and
strategy and contract strategiesand all these different things,
(32:44):
just because you're i I alwaysfortunately, I suppose, just had
the mindset of going in andfiguring out, look, well, how do
I just I just want to make thiscompany successful?
You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01 (32:55):
Like, and I think that that mindset is just it's
so you know, it's funny too yousaid that because I think that's
also kind of helped me havingthat mindset, like similar
mindset to what you justdescribed, and coming into
companies like Indeed andZendesk and Activision.
How do I think outside of myrole and bring value at a much
larger level?
I was constantly thinking aboutdifferent things.
Like even at Indeed, forexample, I was lucky enough to
have the opportunity to helplaunch multiple products because
(33:17):
Indeed was a recruiting company,right?
And they were building tools andproducts for recruiters outside
of, you know, and not justcandidates.
And so that was really excitingto me.
It was like, how can I bringvalue and working with product
managers and being like, hey,like we could do this or we
could do that, and thinkingabout how they could go to
market with the tool.
And I did some proof of conceptsfor some different things and
helped launch products.
And and I just love that aspectof it.
It was a ton of fun.
(33:37):
But it's like you said elevatingyour thinking to that company
level and understanding wherecan I bring more value outside
of just my role or how do I bemore of a strategic thought
partner than just doing what I'mdoing right now?
Or not that you're not a thoughtthought or that I'm not a
thought partner, but you know,how do I continue to elevate
myself essentially?
SPEAKER_00 (33:51):
Yeah, I think it's like for moving up and being a
good leader and being able to beeven in a position to lead, it's
executing on your coreresponsibilities, right?
Yeah.
And it's leveling up in terms ofcan I always add more value than
what's expected, right?
Like exactly.
100%.
Are those the most importantthings when it comes to
professional growth and success?
Or anything.
SPEAKER_01 (34:12):
I feel I mean, yeah, they're definitely up there.
If not, if not one of the mostimportant, or if not the most
important, one of the mostimportant, because I think
that's that's what elevatespeople from being good to great,
right?
There's a lot of good people outthere, but how do you become
great?
How do you become a differencemaker?
And that's where you really wantto be is it's some that this
person's involved with theproject, like they're gonna make
a difference, they're gonnaelevate it, they're gonna think
of things that everyone elseisn't thinking of.
(34:32):
That's how you want other peopleto perceive you and help you
personally grow and things likethat.
SPEAKER_00 (34:37):
Yeah, yeah.
I'm curious too, when you lookat your career now and where
you're at, how do you thinkabout the future and uh
breakthroughs you want to make?
Like, how do you think aboutelevating your own game to the
next level and continuouslyadding more value to the
organization as an operator forsuch a successful company and
somebody who's grown a lotprofessionally and a very
impactful role, right?
(34:57):
Um what's the next level looklike for you?
Because other operators aretuning in, right?
Folks in similar roles.
And I think it'd be reallyvaluable to get a sense for how
you think about your ownprofessional development and
progression and how you're gonnacontinue to evolve.
SPEAKER_01 (35:10):
Yeah, I think for me, and thinking about where I'm
at now, where things are going,where the future of town
acquisition is going, I reallythink understanding how to use
AI and use AI effectively isreally one of the most important
skills.
I think companies are gonnastart to move to more
skills-based hiring versus wherethey're at now.
And I'm not saying that you knowthey're gonna have like skills
marketplaces within companies,but you know, AI and
(35:32):
understanding how to prompt welland things like that is gonna
level the playing field quite abit, right?
And so once you start to levelthat playing field, it's like,
how do I learn, A, positionmyself, be able to do that, and
then where can I grow and addvalue kind of outside of that?
And so I think understanding AI,understanding out how to use it
effectively, how to elevate yourteams to use it effectively,
like that's gonna be thedifference maker moving forward
(35:52):
because people that understandhow to use AI are gonna replace
people that don't understand howto use AI.
And companies are gonna belooking for that skill set
moving forward.
And somebody that has the samelevel of skill, but one
understands AI deeply and knowshow to build agents.
My team's building agents, forexample.
One of the associates on myteam, really fantastic.
Like she's she's great.
She built an AI agent to notonly build job descriptions with
(36:15):
the Zendesk feel to it, but thenalso creates interview questions
that are tied into skills andexperience-based questions.
And so the hiring manager comesin, they can build the job
description, they can get allthe questions for interviews,
standardize it, have it builtout, and so things like that,
right?
And and that's gonna be thedifference maker, um, I think
moving forward is reallyunderstanding how to use AI.
I'm doing everything I can to bea prompt expert and understand
(36:36):
how to leverage it and reallycontinue my learning in that
segment because that's where Isee the most opportunity to move
the meter and the people thatyou know that aren't adapting
are gonna be left behind.
Like I'm just it just is what itis, you know?
SPEAKER_00 (36:48):
Yeah, yeah.
That's um and and this kind ofleads into our rapid fire
questions, the very first one,which I already feel like I have
a sense for your thoughts on thefirst one.
But curious to probably there'ssome nuance here.
Um, but I'd be curious to getyour thoughts on.
Um will AI replace recruiters?
SPEAKER_01 (37:03):
No.
I think again, kind of to what Ijust said, recruiters that
understand how to use AIeffectively will start to
replace recruiters who don't.
And that will be the people thatare going to be elevated and do
the best jobs, are gonna be theones that understand how to get
more out of their day with doingless work.
And I think it kind of goes backto the moniker of work smarter,
not harder, right?
I want you to be as effective aspossible without having to kill
yourself trying to do it.
(37:25):
For sure.
SPEAKER_00 (37:26):
Yeah.
And maybe this also what we werejust talking about feeds into
your next answer.
But um, to this next question,what's a skill every recruiter
will need five years from now?
SPEAKER_01 (37:35):
Prompt engineering, AI literacy.
SPEAKER_00 (37:38):
Got it.
SPEAKER_01 (37:39):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (37:40):
What's the biggest bottleneck in hiring today?
SPEAKER_01 (37:43):
I would say hiring manager capacity, honestly.
Nowadays it's so much easier tofind candidates, source
candidates, have conversations.
There's even AI interviewingproducts nowadays.
And the ability to find,identify, and speak to
candidates is much easier.
But what we don't necessarilyhave more of is hiring managers
or hiring manager time.
A lot of companies have thesemassive goals and they want to
make all these hires, but whenit comes down to it, it's just
(38:05):
simple math.
It's like, okay, if it's fiveinterviews or three interviews
to a hire and you got to make 10hires, I mean we have to have
time for 50 interviews.
These interviews are an hourapiece.
Do your hiring managers have 50hours to do these interviews to
make these hires in by the Xamount of allotted time?
And a lot of times an answer isno.
So I think uh hiring managercapacity would be my answer.
SPEAKER_00 (38:22):
I think that's probably one of the biggest
mistakes I see companies makewhen they're defining their
hiring point.
SPEAKER_01 (38:29):
Yeah, 100%.
SPEAKER_00 (38:31):
What's one change that would instantly improve
candidate experience?
SPEAKER_01 (38:35):
So this might be controversial, but I think I
actually think the uh AIautomated interview tools is
going to help quite a bit.
And I'll tell you why.
Right now we only have so muchtime in the day.
It's hard to review a ton ofresumes.
And so having the ability togive more people an opportunity
for success and a chance at therole, I think will improve
candidate experience because alot of people are getting
(38:57):
ghosted nowadays.
They don't necessarily get aresponse from a recruiter, they
don't get a response from theteam, or maybe they do, but they
don't actually talk to anybody.
And so, at least with an AIinterview tool, they're at least
getting an opportunity to speaktheir experience, to talk about
what they've done and give themat least a shot for success.
And so I think for me, if I wasa candidate, I would much rather
have an AI interview than haveno interview at all.
(39:18):
And so I think as companiesstart to adopt that and tech
companies start to adopt that,we'll see a higher candidate
experience from that.
SPEAKER_00 (39:25):
What's the best piece of career or leadership
advice you've ever received?
SPEAKER_01 (39:29):
I would say um you can never go wrong hiring great
people.
And I think that's very true.
And there's definitely beentimes in my career where I've
hired people with moreexperience with really strong
backgrounds, and instead ofbeing intimidated by that, I'm
excited by it, right?
And it gives me an opportunityto potentially learn from them
and allows them to elevate otherpeople on the team.
And I think that's why my teamshave had success because I'm not
(39:51):
intimidated.
I want to hire great people, andthat's okay if you have more
experience than me or more, youknow, whatever.
Welcome that and I appreciatethat.
SPEAKER_00 (39:57):
I love it.
Awesome.
Well, Everett, we're uh runningout of time.
It's been great to be able tohost you on the show.
This has been really enjoyable.
Um, and I I think uh it's gonnabe a hit.
I think people are really gonnaenjoy this one.
Um, thank you so much tocontributing to the show and our
community.
SPEAKER_01 (40:14):
Well, thanks for having me.
I'm glad to be here and glad toshare my experience.
And uh, this has been fun.
So thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (40:18):
Yeah, it's been a great time.
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