Adapting and Evolving: The Changing Landscape of Recruiting with Sam Kuehnle

Intro [00:00:00]:

Welcome to the elite recruiter podcast with your host, Benjamin Mena, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership, and placements.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:18]:

I'm excited about this episode of the elite recruiter podcast. I have my special guest, Sam Kinley here, who is the VP of marketing, at Loxo. And one of the reasons why I'm excited about bringing Sam in is Loxo is one of the most powerful platforms when it comes to independent recruiters and small to medium sized staffing firms, which means they have tons of data on how the future of recruiting is evolving. So Sam is here to actually talk about some of the data, talk about where things are going. And I as I'm sure most of you, you guys know, because, like, you've heard about podcasts, there's still a lot of recruiters that still stuck in the 19 eighties or the 19 nineties, same as, you gotta be talking about the evolution and how we can make sure that us recruiters We're ahead of the curve so that way we don't get left behind again.

Sam Kuehnle [00:01:04]:

So, Sam, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. I'm excited. Hopefully, I, I live up to that intro right there. You you hyped it up pretty good. Yeah. Well, before we get started, can you tell us a little bit about, 1, your background, how you got into recruiting, and what you're doing now? Yeah. Background have been in the B2B SaaS space for over 10 years, been in house, been in the agencies, So have have seen it all. And one of the first things I heard when I came over to the recruiting space is that the rec tech is about 5 to 10 years behind marketing tech and sales tech. So I feel like I've got this, like, crystal ball in front of me because I've only lived and breathed in in marketing tech for the last 10 years. So To to jump into your next question, I got my my start in the recruiting space when I when I joined the Loxo team here. So, you know, I've engaged with recruiters on a personal level, but I've never seen it at at this level and from this view. And honestly, I think it's one of my my favorite industries not to, you know, blow blow smoke up anyone here, but I I really enjoy the space, and I think that there's so much opportunity. And there's a lot of desire to learn and do better. is something that I do think is unique about recruiters is they wanna figure out, like, how can I do my job better? How can I be more efficient in it? And that's why I'm like, perfect. I've got something for you. I wanna learn from you, but let's make it happen with the tool as well.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:15]:

And, you know, real quick Loxo for those that don't know, if you wanna, like, kinda go into a quick Loxo intro.

Sam Kuehnle [00:02:20]:

Yeah. So talent intelligence platform. What the heck is a talent intelligence platform? most recruiters, you usually have something like a CRM. You have an ATS. You have LinkedIn recruiter, you have an outreach tool, you have a sourcing tool. Account intelligence platform is when you have all that under one roof, because I'm sure you you felt the fun and frustration of trying to, like, sync information from LinkedIn recruiter over to your ATS, or when you wanna send an email to someone to have it synced back to your CRM and it's nonexistent, we have everything in one place. And what that does is it makes the workflows as a recruiter a heck of a lot better and more simple, more effective, And when you look at the the pricing and the savings, most of our our organizations, especially as you were saying, like, smaller shops It's about 90% savings when you start to line item out, like, what you're paying for each of those products versus coming over and joining us. So it's call it. It's one of those no brainers. When I first joined, I was like, Matt, this sounds too good to be true. Tell me, like, what I'm missing here? What's going over my head? He's like, nope. This is this is the future of recruiting.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:16]:

Most people just don't know we exist. I'm like, alright. Challenge accepted. I'm gonna put them in as a marketer. I can solve for that. And you guys also okay. So you got these you got the paid platform that has, like, so many bells and whistles that it knocks out probably about all your 5 other different programs, but you also have a free version too. Can you talk about that? Yeah. So we just rolled it out back in March, but it's it's locked so free. And what it essentially is is

Sam Kuehnle [00:03:39]:

it's an ATS and a CRM. So when we found out how many recruiters, especially when they're starting their own firms, were using Google Sheets or Excel or these other, just, like, trying to manage things out of out of Outlook. We're like, that That's unbearable. How do you possibly do that? And so knowing that's those are the types of recruiters we really wanna help are like, let's make this free. Let them started with this. And then once they start growing their company, they have those first couple contracts, then they can upgrade if they want more features, if they wanna be able to send the emails out, if they wanna be able to get the contact information many recruiters are starting at, like, we just don't have a good foundation. So we're like, let's give you the foundation to start set yourselves up for success in the beginning versus You try to piecemeal at the beginning and then come to us later on and have to rip and replace whatever you'd been doing from from the starts. Like, let's give you that first building block instead.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:25]:

Awesome. Now let's just go ahead and start jumping into the evolution of recruiting. So recruiting. It what the whatever has worked, We all wanna keep on making sure it works day in and day out even though it's, you know, the last 30, 40 years. But here's the thing. Like, we have artificial intelligence. We have digital marketing. Like, I I actually talked to a firm so that do zero outbound, and it's all inbound due to a technology. So, Anna, here's one of the biggest things. I absolutely love artificial intelligence. It is the craziest thing, the automations, the things that you could do, but here's the problem with it. it's creating a lot more noise. And how do you break through that noise? So Sam like, with everything that you've done on the other parts of the marketing world, what do you see with recruiting and where do you see recruiting yet? Where's it gonna go? I'm gonna start this with a caveat.

Sam Kuehnle [00:05:16]:

As we said, I'm new to the space, and I'm gonna talk about how it needs to evolve. Like, I'm typical marketer may take this all with a grain of salt. Don't completely bash me for it, but this is where I like to say, you know, what can you learn in other areas and apply it to new places that you're coming? So, quick metaphor. It's like you'll read a fiction book, and you'll get a great idea. You don't always have to read, like, the non fiction, how to build your business 101. Like, sometimes you get your best ideas from from left field. So I'm like, alright. do I apply what I saw in in marketing and sales and everything else and bring it over to recruiting? So when I first joined Locke, so I I was like, alright. Let's just set the groundwork. How is recruiting done today? And so you've got things like post and pre job postings. How do I get as large of a candidate pool as possible? usually, I'm only starting conversations with candidates that are actively seeking new rules. They're coming to me, withholding compensation and company names until you're ready to talk to me as a scruder. Usually, you know, don't wanna call it poor conversion rates, but I'm passing over a lot of candidates to the hiring manager and letting them kinda figure out, okay, who do you wanna go in interview and everything else? And then I thought that sounds an awful lot, like, marketing about 5 years ago was spray and pre messaging. We were focused on lead quantity over lead quality. we were only running, Google Ads campaigns going after people who are actively in market. You know, I want it what's the best recruiting software and only showing up for for search terms like that? I'm sure you all have seen pricing withheld until you talk to sales. You go to, you know, at, like, Loxo Bullhorn. You you name it. You have to talk to a salesman if you wanna find out how much it's gonna cost for ultimately, that led to poor fit prospects that were being passed over from marketing to sales because they downloaded an ebook. It's like, well, they didn't really wanna talk to sales. They just wanted the content. So a lot of parallels between those 2. I'm like, this is fascinating. So we started to bridge that gap in marketing where now it's marketing's focused on how do you attract your your ICP in the beginning and and really focus on the quality of those people versus trying to get as many as possible. And so how you do this is you create demand for your product, your service, your company well before the prospect enters that market. So instead of saying, I need the best ATS. It's like, hey. I've seen locks all over the place have been giving me a ton of value just going straight to loxo.co to, like, go check out their product. I'm gonna talk to them, and they've transparent pricing on their website. So it's like, I know exactly what I'm get. how much it costs. So when I'm ready to talk to sales, I don't have to do this awkward dance. That's where where marketing tech is coming. I'm like, I see the same type of thing happening for recruitment, recruiters, and everything else. So it's like, Where do you think that that's gonna go with? Okay. As these conversations start to evolve, how do I as a recruiter become more transparent with those those conversations and saying, you know, I'm looking for this role or developing relationships with the candidates far in advance of having the position. So when you do send that MVP over to your your clients, it's like, it's you know, everything about them. so, yeah, it's it's, as I say, that was a long winded way of me getting to, like, that's where I kinda see the future going. So how do we how do we help recruiters evolve and get to that. And that's the part that, like, really gets me excited. So I've definitely got some thoughts on, like, where I can see how to evolve, but I wanna stop for a second because I'm sure that you've probably got a few points in there. No. I was gonna gonna let you keep on going, but, yeah, it's it is one of the things candidates are getting hit up so often because every

Benjamin Mena [00:08:20]:

the problem is everybody knows that they're in a joint campaign. Everybody knows they're they're in a marketing sequence. And some of these people, especially, like, in the cleared space where I'm at, You know, they're like, okay. You're the 50th email that I've gotten to, like, today by noon. I'm in a skiff. I don't have time to sit there and answer every single message back. Well, one, you know, a little more creative than the message. But, too, like, you know, send send them a pigeon or something, like, to the skip door. But, yeah, it's just there's Technology is moving. Technology is here to help us,

Sam Kuehnle [00:08:49]:

and it's I I really truly believe in the foot keep the fundamentals. we need to figure out what how to really evolve. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So it's like I think of three key points from my side. I like to prep for these types of things and have things so people get value out of our conversations. But, you hit it right on the head. One of my biggest ones is, like, outreach needs to improve as you hit on the number of emails, the number of in emails that you receive or anyone receives on a on a day to day basis that are blatantly copy and pasted, like, the number of times I've seen, hey, John. I'm like, I'm not John, but cool. Thanks for letting me know who else you're talking to about this role or roles that I'm pulled into by a bad scrape. So in my about me section, I talk about I wanted to do when I was growing up. It was like physical therapist, soccer player. Do you know how many people I've had to reach out to me say, I'm looking for a physical therapist. I'm like, cool. It's not me, but appreciate knowing that you really didn't do your due diligence and and starting to pull this. Real quick. Has anybody hit you up to be a soccer player? No. But I got a lot of BDRs that are like, yo, I grew up playing soccer too. That's shot. And I would gladly have a conversation with a BDR who does that. I'm like, you read my profile. You did the due diligence. You went on one to one versus just me being a part of this mass upload. Okay. So, yeah, I know it's it's it's fun. So, yeah, that's a big point that, obviously, I'm clearly enthusiastic about But when you think about, like, how do you attract top talent, whether that's you as an employer, you as a recruiter, remote work is is here, and it's here to stay. So People are no longer geologically restricted. I remember I grew up in a city where it's like, you could choose from 10 companies you wanted to work at if you wanted to stay in that city. Now that, you know, you can hire talent from anywhere, you need to create a desire for people to want to come work for your company or or to go through you as the recruiter of choice when they do go start to just find that next opportunity, And that leads into this last one. It's just like transparency. It's more and more important. People want to trust brands. They want to trust recruiters. So getting to the point earlier. It's like, I can't tell you the comp or I'm recruiting on behalf of the company in stealth mode. I'm like, well, if I'm gonna leave a company that I'm happy with or I'm not really actively looking. I don't wanna be set up for a company that could have the worst culture or someone that, like, you know, bad experience. People wanna know that ahead of time, so I don't wanna waste my time. I don't wanna waste your time. So how do you become more transparent in the process? I'm thinking about you're approaching them. They're not coming to you. So you have convince them. You have to make the conversation appealing for them to want to continue that. So that's a a lot of the stuff that, like, you know, those are just three things that I was thinking of with how it needs to evolve, but they're all very doable, but it's also when you put yourselves in the the shoes of the the candidate, the other person, it it makes a lot of sense, but sometimes

Benjamin Mena [00:11:18]:

we so wrapped up in our own head as a recruiter as a marketer that we forget to do that for 2 seconds. Oh, I think part of it is also, like, I hate to say this. Like, the training from the eighties and the seventies, eighties, and nineties, you know, that same training has pretty much been the same. You know, I learned it. I taught this these people this. They taught these people this. They taught these people this. And it you know, this is back in the day where, you know, they didn't have we there was no internet on your phone. It wasn't like people, like, spinning 1 to 4 hours on this. It wasn't like the days where, you know, you've got, like, 400 emails during a day and 35 calls and 75% of emergency spam callers for ERC or whatever kind of stuff. Yeah. Do you remember when you used to be excited to get a phone call or a tech? god. I I thought that was the greatest thing ever. Now I'm like, I and I know candidates probably do the exact same thing. Like, at least the candidates that I talked to, like, most of the time, they they don't have access to their phone during the day. Yeah. So, like, I'm I I catch them on the commute on the way home or in the evening. So, like, they're that little bit of window of time. Yeah. They're sitting with their families. Typically, when I'm calling them, and, of course, you know, I'm super nice. I'm like, hey. If you're busy, like, we could chat later. You know, let's get another conversation, but You know, it's just the nature that nature of the beast. Like, we are I think I'm special. Every other recruiter thinks they're special, but at the same time,

Sam Kuehnle [00:12:40]:

we're They're getting hit up so often. Yeah. There's a lot of us. So, yeah, I mean, I've got to the point where I'm looking at my phone as I say this. If a number pops up that I don't have saved as a number or someone that said, hey. I'm gonna be calling from a area code 123 before it's screened. I'm not even answering it because I know at this point it's gonna be a BDR someone calling about my extended car warranty or something else that I really do not care about. So it's like, yeah, how do you how do you start to break through all that noise? So I think that actually kinda ties in with things that you're really interested about, like, automation AI and and, you know, it's like, it could go one of two ways when you when you really start to play with with some of those layers. So I'll I'll let you tee it up or or go with your thoughts here, but, yeah, I think it's a a good spot to head too. Well, yeah, and, you know, you're also in the digital marketing space, and I kinda want to, like, jump on this. The things that you've seen in other industries, what are some of the ideas that

Benjamin Mena [00:13:29]:

us recruiters can start to implement to kind of be ahead of the curve?

Sam Kuehnle [00:13:34]:

Give value free first. that's probably one of the biggest unlocks that I've seen as a marketer. So many people are have been trained when they wanna buy a tech like, okay, I'm gonna go to a website. Everything's gonna be gated. I'm gonna have to fill out this form to get an an ebook or a white paper just to understand what the heck the product does, and then I'm gonna be entered into a fifty step sequence or a BDR is gonna bombard me over the head until I agree to talk to them. So I was at Refined Labs before I joined Loxo, and we flipped that script on it. So we're, like, give everything away for free. If people wanna research, let them research, you shouldn't have to make it tough for them to do that. And so let them understand who you are, what you do, the value you can provide, but also give that value ahead of time. So especially for someone in services like recruiting, show your expertise up front. So use case studies, use customer testimonials, talk about the tactics that you use. And, often I say, like, give your playbook away because the thing is you're freaked out about giving your playbook away I can promise you 99% of people will read it. Now their head get real motivated. They're not gonna do anything with it. They don't know how to implement it, or they just won't use it. And now a difference between, you know, the top recruiters, the top marketers is they know what to do, how to do it, and they can do it versus just the, like, that that fleeting motivation where it's like, I'm gonna do this. I put it in my sauna board, and then it just goes to die. I know one of the things, like, people don't wanna share their secrets. And I I you just hit this key thing that I absolutely love. Here's the thing that I've learned interviewing some of the top people in our industry.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:57]:

They can share the secrets, but I feel like the the, you know, the amount of, like, implementation sometimes behind something is, like, less than 1%.

Sam Kuehnle [00:15:06]:

Yeah. Ideas or dime a dozen executions everything.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:09]:

And so when it comes down to, like, you know, I I social sharing, like, the way the LinkedIn algorithm is actually built right now, it's actually built for the storytelling. It's built for those success things. And It's us recruiters. Like, I I hate being the center of attention, which is why I I am, like, interviewing people for a podcast and you guys are the center of attention.

Sam Kuehnle [00:15:29]:

But here's the thing, like, even myself, like, get better at like, we've we've shared this on a few other podcasts, but get better at sharing your success stories and show you what you're doing. So Sam, I absolutely love that you're, like, really lighting that. Yeah. I mean, it it adds to your credibility and it's like, okay. If I do have 10 recruiters reaching out to me, I've seen Ben all over the place. I've seen what he does. Like, I have this built in trust with you already where I'm gonna give you a leg up before I go to any of those others because it's like, I have a sense of what it's gonna be like to work with you.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:53]:

So before we, jump into the next part, creating those omnichannel ways of reaching out to people. Do you have any other advice that you'd have on this part?

Sam Kuehnle [00:16:02]:

omnichannel, omnichannel, knowing that Most communications are ignored. Like, we just touched on, like, good luck getting through to my cell phone. You're not gonna find me an in mail. How do you develop the relationship first? So it's like that doesn't really fit into a channel per se, but what you can do to break into this is do some unscalable things first that become scalable. So, like, again, what yeah. What does that mean? You just give me, like, the the eyebrow up. So, take time to create meaningful templates. And so I say templates are what's gonna allow us to scale where you could plug in actual personalized information as part of your outreach. So not just like a Hey, Johnny. Hope you're doing well. How about that weather? You know, have this role here, but figure out a way where it's like, you know, 2, 3 sentences about something that was, you know, interesting that they They put on their profile. 2, 3 sentences about something that they recently posted on LinkedIn or on their website or something, but show that you care. Show that you wanted to take the time to do the research. And this is gonna help you stick out. And when you do have that outreach, if that email, like, they're gonna notice because they're used to so many of these just cut and paste, all of that, where at least You've been red. You've been mentally stored. There are, I think, about 4 BDRs in my head that if I ever need a product, I'd know who they are because they took the time to do this kind of stuff for me. So after you've established that relationship, that's where you can start to build a relationship through email, through phone, through text, through whatever, and say, you know, You've got that incredible experience. Like, I work with clients who would love to have someone like you. Do you mind if I share those opportunities as they come up? So this isn't something I'm trying to place now, but it's that drawn out relationship. We're also I'm not trying to place you right now so I can make a quick buck. I wanna find the best opportunity for you when it's the right time. So value meets just being empathetic and a good human and then drop them into those sequences. That's the scalable part later on. Like, I'm just gonna say, I'll reach out to you every now and then, but I'm forward you emails or forward you different opportunities as they come up, but you're gonna know why I'm sending them to you and and where my head is at as they're being, showing up in your inbox.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:53]:

And I wanna highlight what you just said because I actually had a friend that taught me this. And when you get taught, like, a marketing sequence, it's the coolest thing in the world. It's like, mind blowing. If you don't know about it, like, go learn about it. Loxo even has it. They built into their platform. but he just, like, he he's scraped the list. And then there was an additional column that he built out. He went to every single LinkedIn profile and actually it's just like something personalized and wrote 2 to 3 sentences of personalization. And then the you add that little, like, snippet into marketing sequence, and it is truly a personalized scalable thing. Yes. It takes time, but that's also a $20 to $50,000 check that you're getting.

Sam Kuehnle [00:18:32]:

I'd say that, otherwise, worth it. Absolutely. I mean yeah. And the bar is so low that that's all it takes to make, like, you stack those up. Yeah. Once a quarter. And, I mean, you you just made a 100 to $200,000. Right? So, yeah, I'd say that tie that's time well worth it.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:47]:

Awesome. Marketing.

Sam Kuehnle [00:18:48]:

future of recruiting. Anything else you wanna say? No. I think that's that's good for now. I'm I'm gonna tee us up for round 2 at some point in the future.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:56]:

So when it comes to, like, creating a an omnichannel, what are some of the ways and advice that you would say to do that? Put yourselves in their shoes.

Sam Kuehnle [00:19:04]:

think about when you're being sold to, if you were to be recruited to, how do you wanna have outreach? How would you respond? What are the types of things you would do? So I'm sure that you get this all the time. You get a connect request that has a pitch in it. Like, never engaged with this person. And, honestly, I've been you've been so burned by those people at this point where, you know, if someone's running this playbook, you know what to expect. So how do you, as I say, like, take the time to create that relationship before. So before you even try to form the formal relationship, like, just go find them wherever they're active. If it's on LinkedIn, go follow them. You don't have to connect with them. Follow them. Put the little bell notification on so when they post something, you can go and comment on it as a human being. And you can start the conversation, they're gonna start to see you. And they're like, oh, that's interesting. This person's like, you know, doing some back and forth with me. Do it a few times, and then you can send a connect. You don't have to put on the exclamation. They're gonna know what you do at the end of the day. You're gonna know that you're a recruiter, but it's this, like, being pushed upon sales recruiting motion that has so badly push people in the other direction where once you do that, that opens up the doorway for everything else. So, yeah, then you can send the connect request, or you can say, like, We've had some great conversations. You can shoot them a DM without connecting and be like, I really enjoy your point of view on X Y Z. You know, I work with companies who are trying to find that exact person. Like, Let's keep the conversation going. And that's just such a different dynamic from what 99.9% of the other people do that that is on how you use omnichannel and today. So it's like, find them on social, then you can use email or, you know, if they use preferred text, be like, Love just keep the conversation going. What's your preferred method? Like, happy to do DMs. Happy to do WhatsApp. Wherever you're at, like, just tell me what's easy for you. I just wanna drop a line whenever I have something that's helpful or valuable. And then don't just show up when you have something that's gonna be helpful for you, but if you know that they're in, you know, the construction tech industry and something major to happened, or they're you come across this cool article, send it over to them and be like, hey, thought of you, thought this might be relevant or helpful, or a video, you know, those little things go a long way. And that's where it just reiterates to them. You're in this to help what's best for them and how they can advance as a person and in their career. And then at that point, like, the channel doesn't matter as much. It's finding them where they're at, but you should have the tools to be able to reach them where they're at if it's on social. If it's on email, like, Do you have the the platform that allows you to to do that easily?

Benjamin Mena [00:21:24]:

Well, you okay. So that that's a perfect long game. And I know there's a lot of recruiters that, you know, every time you get position. It's almost like a a guns against your head and you gotta go. Like, how do you, like, kind of start shifting your mindset to play the long game rather than the short game?

Sam Kuehnle [00:21:38]:

the guns against your head, you should already have that little black book filled out. You should know those people. Like, if you have those relationships, if you think about starting your agency, If you're in house, great. Start building your agency on the side right now. Work for 6 months to just build out your relationships to start on that. So then when you do wanna go start placing people, especially, like, we work with exec search and those types of orgs. You're not gonna find that person quick. You've gotta, you know, have those contacts. They're they're not looking to change position right now. So that's the way I would think about it is you have some you have to play the long game and play the short game. You have to go. We were talking about you weren't running six miles right before our conversation. Like, you couldn't just go do a marathon today, you have to practice before you get inside. If you try to jump into it, good luck. You're gonna burn out by half mile. So yeah. Really just You have to get out of your own head. And, like, we've been so trained on this. Like, dopamine hit of everything fast needs to be quick, needs to be high return. Just stop, take a second, breathe, and say, like, if I wanna be a successful recruiter to 5, 10 years from now, what do I need to do to set myself up to be able to do that? And is it sustainable to try to keep doing these, like, quick turnaround quarterly placements or am I in it for if I'm gonna be your 10 years, like, What do I need to do? And it usually does come back to having those relationships, people being willing to talk to you versus hoping that someone you you your 2% open rate gets you someone.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:57]:

Oh, I absolutely love what you just said about looking 10 years down the road and thinking what you need to do today to be that recruiter 10 a decade from now.

Sam Kuehnle [00:23:08]:

Yeah. I mean, that's career advice. Honestly, I think it goes beyond recruiters. That's what one of the like, my mentors told me as a market. I'm I love that. Like, look at recruiting goals past this month, but if we wanna grow and be, you know, own a certain amount of market share by 2025, what do I need to do today? Is a marketer to do that?

Benjamin Mena [00:23:25]:

and pause. Like, I know there's many recruiters that are just like, okay. Like, you know, 10 years to know that, but, like, how many of us that were already 10 years into this? It's never too late to start. Love this. Absolutely love that. So, we've been talking about marketing. We've been talking about AI. We've been talking about All that stuff, there's so many cool tools, but at the same time, what are the proper utilizations for them?

Sam Kuehnle [00:23:50]:

Yeah. It's funny. I was literally just doing this this morning. We're starting up a podcast over at Loxo, and I'm currently hiring a few team members. 1 be helping to create videos from these conversations, but in the interim, it's it's me, team of 1. So how how, like, that's me. Yeah. Right? So we'll have a side conversation about this in a bit. But, like, yeah, how do you how do you create these videos when you also have a million other things to do? So I was like, Let's check out some of those ai tools that are out there. So there's one by open ai. Opus something. I hope it's pro. Opus pro. Yep. Exactly. So I tried that out. And I just shared this thought this morning about it ironically enough, but it was basically let me pull up the post because, honestly, I I do a lot better when I put my thoughts out and then, like, have a second to think on them and read it. So alright. Topic to the post. Will ai replace my job? Like, that's that's what everyone's talking about. Right? So wanted to create these videos. So I was like, alright. Let's look up ai video repurposing tools. Came across Opus Pro. Their their context is I you use 1 long video. You're gonna get 10 viral you know, create 10 times faster. It's a generative AI tool. So I was like, cool. Let's go drop in this episode, see what comes out. And so I I went through this just like, I'm very practical with with the recommendations I do. I love. Theory's great. Practice is better. So I'm like, here's what I learned. Overall rating, 5 out of 10. Well, that's not good for an AI tool. Why is that? And that's not me being skeptical of AI. I found I've had phenomenal uses with it. I've had less than ideal uses. So I was like, alright, pros cons. Let's wait out. Why was this? So pros, it it did a good job of going into the segments. It contained, like, the content and the talk tracks worthy of micro videos. It actually chops up the snippets and combines them together to make the the story and thoughts more cohesive. It adds captions. It adds colors to certain words to emphasize them, and it has a much faster initial turnaround time than a person. It's uploaded 30 minutes later. You've got some of these these videos. So I was like, okay. Well, 5 out of 10. What happened that made me kind of like on it? So sometimes the cut segments were cut short, and it didn't include the points that were something I'd want to include in that clip. Sometimes the chops didn't really make sense, or they they put together the same sentence in it, like, three times. So it's just this weird repetition thing. sometimes the words and the colors that they used highlighted words that didn't make sense to emphasize. And ultimately, it's like, I had 10 videos in 30 minutes, but I'm gonna need to go back in and edit them. So it saved me time. What I ultimately learned was, like, AI is great for going from, like, 0 to 50% in a prod project. It's gonna help you, like, do the initial search. Do the initial lead work. Build the initial, you know, if you're using chat GPT, like, put the prompt in, get v 1 of your email out. But where the value is is is expert coming in afterward and going taking it from, like, 51% to a 100%. That's where the value is. That's how becomes more personal and not just going to blend in with everything else. So, yeah, long winded way of me saying couple takeaways. If AI's gonna replace you, that's a separate issue. You need to have a long talk with yourself if if that's your output. Is it level with, like, 0 to to 50%? And then if I were to think about AI with Loxo, something I'm I'm really familiar with. Promise, I'm not trying to pitch product here. Your recruiter used Loxo. So you're trying to source a candidate. You can go put in your couple filters and say, okay. Cool. I've got I've got 10,000 potential candidates. Now you have to go through and sort through the 50 or the 10,000 candidates. or you use our AI that that uses our same filters, but it also looks at the role that you're hiring for with the title, the company that you're hiring for, and the job description, And it's gonna presort that list for you. So based on those filters, what we know of this, the company, all that's like, we're gonna rank these for you. And more often than not, like, people's eyes light up and they're like, that actually is a really strong candidate. Like, I could go and shortlist 8 out of 10 of these first candidates right now. So that's that's what AI is is it's just how to do that initial research where you're still gonna wanna go and and look at each of those, you know, candidates, but how do you just become a little bit more effective or efficient with it? And that's where I see see it happening is not gonna replace you. It's just gonna it's a superpower if you know how to harness it right.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:52]:

And when you were talking about, the video, Yeah. I I've tried to help us. I've got a whole list of other ones I've tried. And prior to finding those, I think I was spending, like, maybe 5 to 7 hours a week -- outside of recruiting, outside of, like, interviewing for this podcast, just trying to make little video clips. And I was just like, I just can't do this anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it takes time. It's it's fun. Don't get me wrong. It's a great creative side project, but it's like,

Sam Kuehnle [00:28:18]:

by the time you're finished, like, that was a lot of time longer than I than I should have spent on it.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:23]:

I'm like, yay. I got 50 views. Yeah. Yeah. But No. I I absolutely love that because, like, when definitely when it comes to, like, what we're doing with recruiting is AI can make you better. AI can give you the time to actually build those relationships. have those deep conversations and talk about the impact that the position is gonna have on, you know, the candidates, family, their future, everything.

Sam Kuehnle [00:28:44]:

Yeah. And that's where you come in. You add all that. So, yeah, it's like, how do you set yourself up to have more conversations with people versus trying to get the conversations with people, if that makes sense.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:56]:

So another thing I kinda wanna interview you on is I think when I saw, like, one of your is you're like, hey. I'm pretty much shut down this day this week to do some deep work and deep thoughts. I absolutely love that because For Elise me running, that's where I do, like, half half my actual thinking happens on a run for me. It's amazing. Like, the tie the times I get back from a run, I'm just like, oh, yeah. about this? What about this? It actually does a lot of times I actually stop my run and do voice recordings on my watch and everything. But the power of deep work and deep thinking, I think can change a lot of recruiters lives. So do you wanna talk about what you're doing there?

Sam Kuehnle [00:29:32]:

Yeah. It's you have to be very controlling of your calendar. Controlling might not be the right word, but, yeah, protective of your calendar. So the way that I think about this is I know myself and how I work. I think and do best in the mornings when it's just me, you know, brain's still fresh. So you know, 7:30 to 11:30. Like, I'm ready to rock and roll. That's when I wanna wanna take on my my my big rocks. I wanna knock out those big tasks because come lunchtime, I'm I enjoy food. I, I eat big lunches. So, like, my brain usually after lunch is a little bit slower. It's not quite firing. Like, I'm good for social, like, having these types of conversations, but for example, I'm going through, a big messaging project for Loxo. So the big thing is talking about earlier is, like, we're a talent intelligence platform, but we have 6 different instances for each type of recruitment. So we have an ATS CRM 4 exec search for RPO for in house. You know, you name it. if someone comes to our website, they just see it's, like, become a hiring machine. And the biggest thing that we always hear is, like, if you're not built for execs you're not built for RPO, I don't want it. Like, we have a very particular, you know, way that we need to do things. I'm like, okay. How do I better communicate that then? from our home page and then to the specific recruitment type pages to speak to that and show them like, no. We we are for you. We built this in a different way. So That's not an easy project, especially when you're you're 6 months into a new role. You're new to the industry. Like, how the heck do I do this? Well, you have to sit down and think and really, really go through it. So I carved out time where I just I blocked everything. I turned stock off, put my phone down face facing down, and I'm just, like, put headphones on. Let's go to work. And I'm big on frameworks. So I've got, like, my Google sheets up and everything where I'm like, alright. What am I trying to solve for? It's okay. It's like, who are the people? are the industries? What do they care about? How do we solve for this? And just starting to kinda like drag and drop, play with things until I get it to a point where, like, that message makes sense. Let's jump over to Figma and play with this on the website and see what it looks like because things on paper often look good until you put it on, like, a website and then you're just like, oh, way too long. That's not gonna work. So you need to have the time to do that kind of stuff. And that's what I'm what I'm really thinking about as I'm hiring for the the roles on my team is I use an agency right now for for my marketing, but my biggest thing is I want someone that can go play in mid journey for 8 hours a day and come back with one really cool thing. Like, that's what, like, I want someone who can do that because that's what's gonna make us stand out. They're gonna get enjoyment out of that, and that's just a much better use of of time it's gonna be more effective. So how do you let people do edits by letting them have these kind of, like, deep work sessions not needing to be in every meeting all the time. Feeling like they need to reply to Slack or teams or or whatever instant messaging service you use to company. So, yeah, that's kinda like my my general take on it. So, like, to 3 big things that you wanna do in a day. Block the time off to do it. And then it's really easy to, like, start with the easy stuff and be, like, send this email to to Jenny, you know, reply to this message over here, send 10 LinkedIn Connect request. But are those moving the needle that much for you, or are those better to do when you're tired after lunch, and you've got, you know, 20 minutes to kill before your next meeting. It's like, just how do you better organize yourself in your calendar? so that you get the most out of out of what you need to do and and what you know of yourself.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:41]:

I I love that because that's one of the goes into one of the biggest things that seen you with talking with the recruiters, and it's always a struggle. Like, time blocking could be, you know, everything's in that, everything's conversation, but, like, take those warnings and do, like, something deep to some deep work that's gonna really impact, like, what you said earlier. We're gonna be 10 years from now. Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Kuehnle [00:33:00]:

and you were it's funny you were talking about voice notes. you were running and stopping them do that. I learned that lesson the hard way. Do not try to write a, a handwritten memo on your phone while you're running. That will not end well for you or your phone. so props to you for using the voice memo. I wish I had that advice before.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:16]:

Oh, real quick. if you use chat g p t on your phone, it like, the voice transcription is amazing. interesting. I haven't tried it on my phone yet. good to know that. Very good to know. Sorry for the tangent. Alright. Before we jump into, when we go to call the quick fire questions. Is there anything else that you would love to cover?

Sam Kuehnle [00:33:32]:

No. I this has been a fun conversation. Honestly, it's like it's a breath of fresh air because I've been on so many marketing podcast where it's nice to, like, come from a different angle and and all this. So this is fun. I love it. Let's go.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:43]:

Alright. With everything that you see at Loxo, the data, the customers, what advice would you give to a brand new recruiter that's just getting started in the industry in 2023?

Sam Kuehnle [00:33:55]:

Alright. Take this with the grain of salt again. Need of the space. Can messaging and a last lack of research is not the answer. Like, quantity is not the game that's gonna work anymore. You really need to figure out how you can stand out and those conversion rates pan out. And when I say conversion rates, I know it's this quick fire. Sorry. It's gonna be slow fire for for a quick second. This is, like, I saw us in marketing all the time. You have a 100 MQLs, but only, like, 2 convert into an opportunity for sales. Well, that's not very good. You had a lot of volume up top, but not much mattered for the business. Same kind of thing with outreach. If you send a 100100 emails, when you get 2 responses, it's like, well, what if I take the time that I spent used to sending a 100 emails only send 10, but I get 5 people to respond. 5 responses versus 2 responses. I don't care if it's, like, less qual quantity at the top. about what you're ultimately trying to achieve at the end of the day and work backwards from that. And usually, the quality argument starts to Have it make a lot more sense for you and your behaviors and what you do.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:48]:

I love that. And, there's a podcast that's not live yet, but she built a $1,000,000

Sam Kuehnle [00:34:54]:

I only did those 3 interviews a week. That's incredible. I want I wanna hear that one because that's probably a testament to this. If I can hit a quality over quantity. Yeah. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:04]:

Alright. Now when it comes to, like, people that have been around the block, like, I kinda joke around. I'm I'm almost 20 years into this career. What advice would you give to those recruiters that have been the game for a while that either wanna continue seeing success or want to keep on growing? Chain or being scared of change

Sam Kuehnle [00:35:23]:

is a big thing. Change management or new things. I remember when, you know, AI chat GPT first came out, you'd always see people. It was really interesting to see who was for it and who was against it. And how I kinda saw the the sides shake out was the people that were scared of it were people that ran the playbooks that didn't use it, or they had a product or service that didn't use it, and it was about to be challenged, or there's a better way. So Being able and willing to overcome that, I think, is a is a big thing. So, well, you've been your experience, you you've been in the space or else. So how do you what you know, what you've done to be successful. I mean, you you don't stick around in the space for 20 years if you haven't been successful. So some things are timeless, you know, developing relationships exactly what you're doing right here, teaching others. And then how do you evolve that over time? So that's what we were saying. Like, how do you get smarter with your out you can still take the time to go find the research on them to do the personalization to develop that relationship, but it it's not gathering their business cards at events any more. It's, you know, it's finding them digitally or, you know, engaging with them online. So it's just it's it's different mediums to the same goal that you used that you've always been doing if you've been successful with it.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:28]:

Awesome.

Sam Kuehnle [00:36:29]:

Has there been a book that has had a huge impact on your career? I really thought about this one because you did sell this one ahead of there's so many, I wanna call them, like, not common books, but a lot of the same books are recommended over and over. So I was like, alright. What's one that I actually have enjoyed that is a little bit different? It's called Boyd, the fighter pilot who changed the art of the war by Robert Quorum. And why? I mean, it's it's about a fighter pilot from, like, the 50, 60, So why the heck is is is that helped by career? So what it really gets into in the book and what's fascinating is it really talks his thought process and how he approached his work. And it's not as a fighter pilot per se, but he really went deeper. So pulled out a couple quotes from it to help bridge that gap. So one is, like he said, if you want to understand something, take it to the extremes or examine its opposites. So I was like, okay. Like, that That's going past surface level insights. Like, why is this working? Why is this not working? What happens if I did it this way instead of that way? And you'll go through it all. And then this next one is a little bit of a longer quote, but this is kind of on a on a moral level when you really think about your career and and why this one is stuck with me. So he's got this speech. He calls it the to be or to do speech. And the the way that it goes is basically says, and you're going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go. He raised his hand and pointed if he will go that way, you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises, and you will have to turn your back on your friends. you will be a member of the club, and you will get promoted, and you will get good assignments. Then he raised his hand and point in the other direction, or you can go that way and you can do something. something for your country, and for your air force, and for yourself. If you decide you want to do something, you may not get promoted, you may not get the good assignments, and you certainly will not be a favorite of superiors, but you won't have to compromise yourself. You will be true to your friends and to yourself, and your work might make a difference. To be somebody or to do something in life there's often a roll call, That's when you will have to go and make a decision to be or to do which way will you go. That stuck with me. That hit hard because I feel like so many people do. It's like, You see the bureaucracy, the how you have to play the game internally if you wanna grow, but you also know, like, I don't think that's right. I don't know if that's the right way. That's why with me and my career, I've always kept that in the back of my mind. It's like, do I wanna play the game, or do I wanna do something that truly makes an impact? I absolutely love that. taking a pause before we go to the next question. Coffee break. Hold on. We just went way too deep there for a podcast.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:51]:

I absolutely love that. So because of that, I'm gonna skip the next question. Now when it comes to your success that you've had, Has there been a challenge that you've had to go through, or with you, would you say has been a big contributor to your success?

Sam Kuehnle [00:39:07]:

It's kind of along those lines. Like, trust your gut when you think that something isn't working or that there's a better way. because more often than not, it's right. So with me and and in marketing, When I first got started, I was running the digital marketing campaigns that were come to our webinar, get this ebook, and I did great. We hit our marketing We blew them out. We got all the leads that sales could ever want, but sales missed their pipeline goals. And I'm like, well, what the heck? That doesn't make sense. Like, we just doubled our goal, and they they fell short of theirs at why is that happening, you know, based on predictable funnel, predictable modeling, all that? And that's why I flipped it over. I was like, okay. Let's be Let's be an end user for a second and and the people I'm trying to get to become customers for us. They're downloading an ebook. They're coming to a webinar. Well, those are to educate them. Those are for them to, you know, just understand, like, what's the best practice? Those aren't ready people ready to talk to sales. So that's when I really started to get that ball rolling with, like, got to be a better way to do this. And and that's where it came. It's like, those people aren't ready to talk to sales. Don't pass them over to sales because one of the biggest things that I saw at the time was a marketing sales relationship wasn't hand holding. It was clashing. Like, they were they were bumping heads hard because they were like, oh, marketing gave us leads. And then Marketing's like, we hit our lead goal. Why aren't you following up with them? Well, you know why? They they learned their lesson. Like, they're not worth talking to, so they don't even touch them. So, yeah, long winded way of saying, like, my gut was like, let's do it a different way. What happens if, like, we only focus on the people that, you know, explicitly say, hey. I wanna talk to sales. I'm like, I'll tag those leads separately. I'll send it to the sales rep and say, hey. Just an FYI, like, this is someone who actually wants to buy, not someone who just, like, you know, downloaded this thing over here. And those started to convert to opportunities and to customers. So I was like, how do I reverse engineer that process then to get more people who come to us, who want to buy. Like, what was their path? Why was that different? So go have conversations with them and understand, you know, how did they find out about us? They had a relationship. They had a peer who told them about it. They heard the pa the CEO on a podcast somewhere. So I was like, alright. Let's do more of those actions. More of those behaviors from marketing than this ebook stuff that's not working. So hot take not hot take. you know, quick fire question again. Gone long, but trust your gut. Like, if you think there's a better way, There probably is.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:16]:

I love that because in recruiting, there there's a 1000 ways to skin the cat. Yeah. But, like, the way that we, like, it was good learning the foundation, but there were plenty of ways to get new business and find candidates about that. This is actually one of my favorites. If you can go back to the very beginning of your career, Sam, everything that you've learned, the ups and downs that you've gone through. What advice would you tell yourself if you sat down with yourself?

Sam Kuehnle [00:41:43]:

The work in the trenches is worth it. When you're going through it, it sucks. I started as an, we called it an ADR account development rep said, a a business development representative, you know, the person that was hitting the phones, hitting the emails, all of that, I could not wait to get out of there. I was like, this job is brutal. I don't wanna do this. What's the point? But as I've now moved along in my career, given me empathy for the people in that role and those how I can how I can help to lead those teams. Like, I know what they're going through. And I also know how to help them because you see these are junior people who are they're coming out of college. They wanna learn. They don't have the experience, so I can take my experience. What did I learn when I was in that role to help them be successful? So it's like try this outreach method instead of that one or, you know, just helping to guide them in that way, but had I not experienced that for myself or going through it? It's really easy to just be like, yeah, it's a job. Go figure it out. Go do it and just kinda, like, Wonder why your team's burning out, wonder why you've got crazy turnover. And, usually, it it it comes back to the manager of it. Well, Sam, before I let you go, is there anything else that you would love to share with the listeners? No. This has been fun. I'm I'm honestly, as I said, I'm 6 months in over here at Loxo, so I've got a lot to learn. if people have recommendations on things I should look into to help educate myself. Like, I'm all ears, eyes, what anything else that I can use to absorb. So, I know I said I I don't check my emails and DMs for cold messages, but use a relevant subject line like, hey, man. Saw you on the elite recruiter podcast. I'm gonna open that. I'm probably gonna read it. Yeah. Like, I'm I'm a sponge at this point, and what my goal here at Loxo is is to help create more content, like, like, what you're doing here, Ben, with like, how do we help empower recruiters? How do we help them do their jobs better, more effective, and and at the end of the day, that's my goal. So,

Benjamin Mena [00:43:23]:

Just wanna help make that happen. I love that. Well, Sam, I just wanna say thank you for coming on podcast. It's been awesome talking about the evolution of, like, where Recruiting has been and where recruiting is going and how you can capitalize on that and also make more money. So, Sam, definitely thank you for coming on. Yeah. Appreciate you having me. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, it's subscribe and leave a rating.