Digital Marketing Secrets for Recruiters with Brad Bialy

Brad Bialy [00:00:01]:
Welcome to the Elite Recruiter podcast with.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:04]:
Your host Benjamin Menna, where we focus.

Brad Bialy [00:00:06]:
On what it takes to win in the recruiting game.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:09]:
We cover it all from sales, marketing.

Brad Bialy [00:00:12]:
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 guests. We're going to talk about how you can use digital marketing to make more placements, how you can use digital marketing to get leads. And I know it's one of those things like we hear about how important digital marketing is, how important it is to build a brand, how important it is to do so many different things. But at the end of the day, like there's so many options out there, it's like, what the hell do I do that works? So I am super excited to have Brad with me to talk about how to actually do digital marketing that will one make you more money, make more placements and bring in more leads. So Brad, welcome to the podcast.

Brad Bialy [00:00:55]:
Excited to be here, Benjamin, really excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:58]:
So before we kind of get started and start going into your story, talk about what you're doing now with Haley. Marketing.

Brad Bialy [00:01:06]:
Yeah, so I've been with Haley now for eleven years. Right now I'm still our director of digital marketing, but the role has changed a little bit recently. So right now I sit on our account management team, which means honestly, I have a great job. I get to talk to clients all day and just come up with really awesome marketing strategies. So I given day I'm talking to numerous clients, figuring out their challenge, their goal, and how to reverse engineer some marketing strategies to reach those goals. I also host our podcast over here, take the stage and insights, which is found under the secrets of staffing success umbrella and have a huge, huge passion for creating great content for the industry. So it's what I'm doing on a.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:42]:
Daily basis and that's actually one of the reasons why I'm excited. When you get like, you talk to all these amazing recruiters, you talk to so many different like staffing companies and you've also been in this like the digital marketing game around recruitment for well over a decade. Yeah, there's a lot of people that I see like coming into digital marketing or jumping into the recruiting space and some of them have never even been around the space and they're like three months in. Like I've mastered digital marketing for recruiters and I'm like, I think I'd rather talk to Brad.

Brad Bialy [00:02:11]:
Yeah, I mean, if they have, I'd love to talk to them too. Because even after eleven years, I find something new every day. And that's one of the great benefits of Haley marketing, is we have a team of 80 over here. So I'm constantly learning from other people. You know, as much as I read and listen to podcasts and, you know, subscribe to other great thinkers, the value is listening everybody else over here. So, yeah, if, if you've mastered it in three months, give me a call. I'd love to chat and know what you know as well.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:35]:
Awesome. Well, Brad, like, that kind of goes into, like, you know, how'd you even get into the recruiting digital marketing space?

Brad Bialy [00:02:42]:
I fell into it just like anybody else. Right. I don't think anybody goes to school to be a recruiter. I went to school with a marketing degree. As I was about to graduate, a friend of a friend reached out to somebody that I knew, said, hey, do you know anybody in marketing? We're hiring. So I started at Haley when I was still a senior at Brockport. I was driving in on Fridays, and Mondays was sort of part time interning. I think they were trying me out.

Brad Bialy [00:03:06]:
It's just as much as I was trying Haley out. Right. It's a really good two way street. I fell in love with the company. They liked what I was doing at the time. So as soon as I graduated, I started full time the, the week after I graduated. So really, just like any sort of recruiter or anybody in staffing, you kind of just fall into it. That's how I fell into this space as well.

Brad Bialy [00:03:24]:
And since then, I've. I haven't looked back. I've been having a really good time, so.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:29]:
Okay, so you've. You started there at Haley, but you grew, like, how big was Haley, like, at that point in time when you started there?

Brad Bialy [00:03:36]:
Gosh, when I started at Haley, we had to be a team of 15 to 20. Maybe. I could tell you the digital team was a team of four, including me. Now, I believe the digital team alone is 22 to 25 people. So we've grown significantly in the last call a decade.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:54]:
Okay, so, like I said, this is why I want to bread on. It's not like a one person shop sitting there that has all the secrets. No. This is a massive powerhouse in the staffing industry that knows exactly what they're doing. Let's just dive right in. What does digital marketing look like for a recruiter or for a staffing company?

Brad Bialy [00:04:13]:
I think it's different for anybody. It looks like what works for them. And I think that's where a lot of people come into the space and they think they know the end all solution because it works for them or they see it work for one client or one specific instance. You know, digital marketing for recruiters, for the staffing industry, whatever it might be, you got to start with what you're trying to achieve as a goal first and then reverse engineer the digital marketing that supports that goal. One thing that I'll say constantly, and I might say a few times on this show, there is no silver bullet. There is no perfect solution. We need to start with that end destination and then sort of reverse engineer what that might look like. And that varies.

Brad Bialy [00:04:51]:
It's going to vary client to client. It's going to vary person to person. But I think the best thing that I could say is you got to get started somewhere and you start with where you're most comfortable. You start with what works for you and then you expand from there.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:03]:
Like, what are some of the things that you can do to start that digital marketing journey?

Brad Bialy [00:05:07]:
I think the best thing that you can do is leverage your database that you have already. We are very much creatures of, I have a new order. I'm going to go source and I'm going to throw out everybody I've talked to over the last ten to 15 years. And Benjamin, maybe you can enlighten me on that. I cannot figure out why we do that. I know recruiters love the hunt. I get it. I understand personality type pretty well.

Brad Bialy [00:05:31]:
I get it. New order comes in, let's go find that person. But we neglect all of the conversations we've had in the past, and we do it so often. So the best thing that we can do is start with our database. And then, yes, there's digital tactics that we can deploy because of that database, but it comes back to the fundamental principle of, you've talked to people in the past, talk to them again.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:53]:
I think maybe some of that is just you always want to figure out, like, you know, many times, like, I know when I first got started recruiting, it was if you were on the job board in the past two days, you were acting, looking, versus me going back and looking at these conversations and the crappy notes that I took.

Brad Bialy [00:06:08]:
Right, exactly right. Exactly right. Now I get it. I get it. But, you know, that database is so personal to you and it has so many great individuals in it, whether it's candidates or if we talk prospect side of things, we need to leverage that database. We absolutely need to go back to.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:25]:
It, is that one of the things that when you guys are sitting there coaching clients is like one of the first things you say is just like, what about that database you have?

Brad Bialy [00:06:32]:
It's usually mine. Yeah, it's usually mine. So if I'm coaching a client, I want to figure out what they're already doing. So I mean to sort of back it up. I want to know where the pain really is. Right? So if you're saying, well, I can't get orders or I can't get applications or whatever it might be, well, why? Where is the actual pain? And that's sort of just like a medical analogy, right? If you have lower leg pain, it could really be because your hips are tight. It could be because your lower backs tight. It shows itself somewhere else.

Brad Bialy [00:06:57]:
So when I'm talking to a client or a prospect or whoever it might be, and they say, well, this is the perceived pain, I want to think about where it really is and then from there, okay, well, what are we currently doing? What are we missing out on? Nine times out of ten, it's going to start with that database for me.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:12]:
Okay, so let's pick a pain. We're going to pick the pain. Not getting enough job orders to work on for this episode. So we figured out that's what hurts. Okay, what do we go about doing to rectify? Yeah, we're seeing Doctor Brad now.

Brad Bialy [00:07:27]:
Yeah. So let's workshop that. Right? So you're not getting enough orders. How many orders do you need to be successful this year? What's that number look like to you? Is it 100 or do you just need one more order this year to make it a great year? So I would first ask, okay, well, what does that look like to you? How many orders do we need? And you might say, Brad, I need five. Okay, great. So five is our number. Current clients, what are you doing to diversify the orders that you have from current clients? Are you going deeper in those organizations? Right. So they know that you can place digital marketing professionals in their organization.

Brad Bialy [00:08:01]:
Do they also know that you can place accountants or clerical reps or whatever it might be? Are you going deeper with the current relationships? You already have one way to drive more orders. Outside of that, what are you doing to prospect? How are you getting new orders from people who don't know you? And maybe back up for a second? You know, in my mind there are three buckets of people that you can get orders from. There's current clients. You do more business with them. There's people you've worked with in the past, go back to them and get more orders from the people you've worked with. In the past, and there's people who have no idea who you are, and you go out and get new orders from those types of people. So we need to sort of break it down that way. And I know I kind of went on a tangent, took you two different ways, but if our number, we first need to know the number.

Brad Bialy [00:08:37]:
Right. We all need more orders. We all do. Right. And I've never talked to any recruiter says, well, I'm comfortable, so we all need more, but how many more? What does that mean? And we need to actually put a number to it.

Benjamin Mena [00:08:49]:
I love that you said, like, you know, go deeper on the relationships you have. Yeah. I think that's the thing that a lot of people don't do. Like many of us grew up in such a transactional environment. Yes. That we're always, like, chasing the next thing. So we go deeper in the relationships we have. Let's, like, go back to the people that we've done business before, because if you've been in recruiting for a while, you've placed people, you've hired for people.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:09]:
What about the people that. And I really want to kind of focus on the people that don't have a clue who the heck you are.

Brad Bialy [00:09:15]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:16]:
How do you, like, get in front of them, open up their doors, get those conversations going, get those relationships, and get those orders.

Brad Bialy [00:09:22]:
It's first going to start with figuring out who those people might be. Right. So what does that list look like? Are you super, super niche recruiter who only has maybe 20 prospects in the entire world, or are there multiple people.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:35]:
You can work with?

Brad Bialy [00:09:35]:
Right. Like, what does that list look like? Do you only recruit in Buffalo, New York? Because that list is different than if you're a nationwide recruiter. So find those targets. Once we find those targets, then we need to figure out how to open the door. And that right now is the biggest challenge that I hear every single day. It's, I can't get orders. I can't get past the gatekeeper. I can't get the second conversation.

Brad Bialy [00:09:57]:
If I have the first conversation, they're already working with somebody. They're doing it themselves. Maybe they just, you know, don't need us at this time. That's the biggest challenge. So for me, you need to figure out how to open that door and how to make that conversation start. And that's going to vary client to client. And I wish I could give you the perfect solution, but there are things that you can do. Right, so maybe we have, I'm going to say it, direct mail.

Brad Bialy [00:10:21]:
Right? We reach out to people via direct mail and we're getting in front of them that way. Maybe we're still emailing them. We're using social, we're connecting on LinkedIn, we're using paid ads. We have sort of this holistic ecosystem that is getting in front of them because we don't know where they're ultimately going to take action from, but we just want to stay in front of those targets everywhere they look.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:42]:
How many, like, I love that you guys have, like, a total, like, ecosystem. How many touch points is it now becoming to actually open up that conversation?

Brad Bialy [00:10:50]:
I feel like I heard 17 in a recent report. I don't have that number offhand, but 1715 to 20 feels like a number to me that I've heard just from a recent marketing report.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:01]:
And I know a lot of recruiters because I've been guilty of this. Like, previously.

Brad Bialy [00:11:04]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:04]:
You know, like, you hear a no and you're done, or you don't hear back one or two times and you're done. Like, what kind of system do you have to have in place to be able to consistently hit that, get up to that 1517 to 20 touch points?

Brad Bialy [00:11:16]:
Yeah. It could be direct mail, it could be postcards, it could be letters. It could be a system where you're putting together a 15 step campaign. Right. And this is very tactical, but maybe out of 15 steps, you have five or six letters that are getting sent in the mail. Maybe you have one or two LinkedIn and mouse. Maybe. I am starting to hate LinkedIn.

Brad Bialy [00:11:36]:
We can talk about that in a second if you want. But maybe you have one to two LinkedIn and Mouse. You know what it is? It's the people who don't know how to use it that are ruining it for everybody else. And it's becoming, you know, in mail as a graveyard of just nonsense. But maybe we use in mail the right way. Maybe we're actually picking up the phone and we're being a recruiter and we're calling people. Right. We're actually getting on the phone.

Brad Bialy [00:11:56]:
I know, right. Maybe we do that. Maybe that's a step in the process. But, Benjamin, what I'm getting at is it's not just consistently in mail. In mail, in mail, in mail, or email, email, email. It's a system of hitting people in different ways. And the analogy that I can give you is you might listen to the morning news one way. Maybe you check Twitter every morning.

Brad Bialy [00:12:15]:
I might get on my morning commute and listen to the morning news. Somebody listening to this episode might read the morning paper. Somebody might watch it on tv. We're all getting the news. We're all consuming the message. But how we get the message is different. Our prospects are the exact same. We don't know if Benjamin, the prospect, is going to respond to in mail or if he's going to respond to a physical letter in the mail.

Brad Bialy [00:12:36]:
So we need to hit him in multiple ways so that eventually he responds.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:41]:
Okay, so I love letters in the mail. I love. Yeah, I have to automate that because I can't actually read my own handwriting. There's robots that actually do a great job. But what are you saying in a letter or saying in a piece of mail that actually gets a response?

Brad Bialy [00:12:57]:
So what you're saying has to be about them. It ultimately has to be about their pain points. And we need to know our target audience very, very well. And that's where a few moments ago, I talked about understanding that target audience. What are your prospects? Who are your prospects? We need to know what is keeping them up at night, and we need to be speaking their language. I think the worst marketing right now is me centric. It's all about us, what we do, who we are. That is not going to cut through the clutter anymore.

Brad Bialy [00:13:25]:
Right. There are too many people that do what you do who are also saying, hey, here's who I am, and here's what I do. At the end of the day, your prospects don't care who you are. They care about their problem and how you're going to solve that problem that they have. So we need to have that messaging in there. We need to be talking about their pain points. I love data. Any chance we get to talk about, hey, here's a pain point that we know you have, and here's the data that supports how we can fulfill that or challenge that or succeed ultimately.

Brad Bialy [00:13:51]:
I love that kind of messaging as well.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:53]:
You mentioned a few times about having this, like, ideal prospect list, the ideal people that you're.

Brad Bialy [00:13:57]:
Yeah, yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:58]:
I think that's a thing that a lot of recruiters never sit down and actually do.

Brad Bialy [00:14:02]:
Yeah, yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:03]:
Is that something that Haley can help create?

Brad Bialy [00:14:07]:
We can. There are some great tools that can help you as well. I know you're very big on AI from the show that we were on and also the webinar that we were on together. I think you're probably more in the AI space than I am, so you might have better tools that you can share with listeners, but we can help some things that I love to do that Haley can absolutely support with IP tracking I think it's table stakes of having a website in 2024. And if you're not familiar with that is, it's essentially code and tracking software that goes on your website so that if somebody from Haley marketing looks at your website, you know that that individual is on your site without them filling out a contact form. We're all window shopping right now in 2024. Whether you're looking for a new polo, a new shirt, or recruiting services, we're window shopping. So knowing who is on your website is critical.

Brad Bialy [00:14:54]:
That's a great way to start building that list.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:56]:
Do you guys do, like, own IP tracking software? I know one that's actually pretty good. I just don't want to name it.

Brad Bialy [00:15:01]:
Go ahead. No, we have a partner that we work with.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:03]:
I think it's wormaly as the company.

Brad Bialy [00:15:05]:
Okay. Yeah, I'm not familiar with them.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:06]:
Okay.

Brad Bialy [00:15:07]:
I know. I mean, Zoom info does it. They're a big player in the space. We partner with another organization and use that as a solution for our clients. We don't have our own proprietary software.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:16]:
How often does that IP tracking end up turning into, like, a conversation and a placement?

Brad Bialy [00:15:22]:
I can tell you a client of mine reached out because I'm very, very particular with speaking. This individual, he closed 14 orders just from his IP tracking software alone in the month of May. 14 orders. So his software triggered individuals who are on his website. His sales team reached out to all of those individuals. And now, Benjamin, I'm not reaching out to those people saying, like, hey, Ben, know you were on our website yesterday. How can I help? But you're still cold calling, but you have the inside information knowing they were on the site the day before. Right.

Brad Bialy [00:15:53]:
They closed 14 orders just off of that list. So these are people who did not fill out a contact form. They didn't call the office. They didn't do anything but window shop. The sales team then went to work with that list and closed 14 orders.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:06]:
Wow, that's wild.

Brad Bialy [00:16:07]:
We're window shopping, and it feeds into that. We're all looking at websites all day, right? So if somebody does want to work with a recruiter, we're not going with the first person we look at. We're thinking about it. We're doing our due diligence. We're researching them. We're looking at reviews, we're looking at their social presence. We're thinking about it, but we're not filling out that contact form. So for this particular company.

Brad Bialy [00:16:31]:
Yeah. 14 orders in the month of May alone.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:33]:
All right, so that is just crazy. And, like, if you want to get in touch with Brad to talk about that more, definitely hit up. So I also want to talk about paid ads because.

Brad Bialy [00:16:43]:
Yeah, let's.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:44]:
Paid ads, I feel like works for so many different like, industries. Yeah, I just, I think recruiting is one of the toughest places for paid ads. But because you guys have so many people on your team, you guys have worked with so many staffing companies, like what is working in paid ads and how do you set up paid ads to be successful?

Brad Bialy [00:17:02]:
What is working. Let me back up. Let me talk about what I like when it comes to paid ads first. Cause I know what's working. I can take this a couple different ways. If you have a website in 2024, I fundamentally believe remarketing is a pay per click advertising tactic. That is table stakes of having a business remarketing are the Amazon ads that follow you around the Internet. You look at a product, a pair of shoes, a hat, whatever it might be on Amazon, you don't buy it.

Brad Bialy [00:17:25]:
You go out to Facebook, you go out to the Internet and that product follows you around. Amazon popularized it. Nike does it. Any sort of Lululemon, any sort of consumer good brand, you're going to recognize these types of ads following, right. Those tracker ads that follow you everywhere because we're window shopping. I fundamentally believe if you have a website, you need to have that on your site to stay top of mind with people as they go out throughout the Internet. So those are working well. I also love any sort of ad.

Brad Bialy [00:17:52]:
This is sort of a new, newer idea for me. It's not new to the space at all, but just something that I've been particular about. We all want to steal traffic from our competitors. So I think buying your competitors keyword and showing up in position zero is a fundamental PPC idea that you need to do so. You know, Benjamin's recruiting firm is a top competitor of mine. I'm going to buy that keyword so that anytime somebody searches for them, Brad's recruiting firm shows up first. Simple as that. Car manufacturers do this.

Brad Bialy [00:18:19]:
If you search for BMW right now, I'm sure you'll see Mercedes or Audi at the top. They buy each other's keywords because they're, they're trying to steal traffic. Rental car companies do it very, very well. We should be doing that too.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:30]:
How to do that? What's the typical cost range to be able to buy a competitor's keyword?

Brad Bialy [00:18:36]:
It's going to vary and I'm sorry, I can't give you a straight answer. Are on that. It's going to depend on where you're located, the size of your competitor and ultimately the radius that you want that ad to show in. The perfect analogy for you is anybody can buy a billboard in New York City, but for $5 it's going to show up on the back of a trash can down some alley that no one's going to see, right. If you want the billboard in Times Square, you're going to pay a heck of a lot more. And that's the same way that PPC ads work. So if you are in Buffalo, New York and you only recruit in Buffalo, New York, that ad cost is going to be very, very different than if you're in LA, but you're a national recruiter. It's just that advertising budget has to stretch farther, right? So the cost to get started, you can literally get started for like $10 a day and then scale from there, right? See what's working, see what's not.

Brad Bialy [00:19:24]:
Alex Hermosi, who I really like, he has book $100 million leads and his whole methodology is you sort of diversify all of your ad budget across multiple ads. You find the ones that are working, you kill the budget to the ones that aren't. You reinvest it in the ones that are. You run that for a while, find the ones that are still working, kill the budget and reinvest it. So you're just sort of compounding that onto the one that works. I love that methodology because you start big and then you're fine.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:50]:
I get it that you guys set all this up, but for somebody just learning about digital ads for the recruiting space, where's a good place to start learning about this?

Brad Bialy [00:19:59]:
You go to halemarketing.com. we have a ton of ebooks on it. We have a ton of content on it. Our podcast talks about it quite a bit. If you want to go outside, Haley, I would just go to YouTube and type in literally how to get started with remarketing ads, how to get started with buying your competitors keyword search. There's going to be hundreds of videos on it from some of, you know, the top thinkers around the world. I would start there.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:22]:
Okay, so we've talked about advertising or paid ads. I've talked about, I love the IP tracking. That's just something that I have not heard that much about in the recruiting space. Yeah, been watching it and they go to market Sats SaaS world like crazy. Like what else when it comes to advertising and digital marketing, can we recruiters do to get more business?

Brad Bialy [00:20:42]:
So I'm going to talk social for a second. Everybody talks about having a personal brand so much that I think it's almost a broken topic at this point. But individuals do business with people trust, and they do business with people that they respect. And if you are a ghost on social media, your prospects and your candidates are going to see that and they're going to instantly lose trust. So the more value that you can add across social, the better. The more value you can give to the end user, the better. It's a way to build credibility. So I don't think social is dead organic.

Brad Bialy [00:21:14]:
Social is very difficult right now, but if you have a voice and you have opinions as they relate to your area of expertise, I would absolutely double down on that.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:23]:
Okay, well, before we jump over to the quick fire side of the podcast, is there anything else that you want to cover? Share about the digital marketing journey this.

Brad Bialy [00:21:32]:
Has been a ton of fun for me. I don't get to talk tactics too much on my shows. I'm talking more of the theory and the strategy behind it. So you're going to ask me what's working and I can kind of jump into the mud. It's been a lot of fun. You know, when I think about what's working, it's understanding goal, right? So I guess I do have a couple things that I could talk about real quick. Is understanding your main goal first. So where is the real pain? Understand that understanding the strategy and the tactics you're going to leverage to reach that goal.

Brad Bialy [00:21:57]:
Obsessing over the data. We as an industry already don't invest a lot in our marketing. We cannot be wasting money. So if you don't know what's working and what's not good, time to stop and take a pause and say, okay, let's look at the data, entrust the data and live by the data. If it's not working, it's okay to punt it. It's okay to say, listen, we tried, let's try something else, but give it its time and try. Understand the data, understand your goals and you should be marching closer to those goals. If youre not individuals like myself, there are others in the space.

Brad Bialy [00:22:27]:
Wed love to chat and just talk about what you might be doing differently and with absolutely zero commitment. Right. I just love talking about this kind of stuff.

Benjamin Mena [00:22:34]:
Well, before we jump over to quickfire, questions, sure. Recruiting can be a very high margin, profitable business. Were talking gigantic placement fees. We're talking about people on contract for months on in. Why don't recruiters and recruiting companies spend money in advertise can you answer that first?

Brad Bialy [00:22:53]:
What do you think?

Benjamin Mena [00:22:54]:
I think it's because we just don't know if it works.

Brad Bialy [00:22:56]:
Yeah, I think that's probably right, too. And not to spin it back on you, I think that's right. It's not measuring it and saying, listen, is what I'm doing, working the other. And this actually came from a conversation I had with a recruiter. He said, brad, if I give you this money for this budget, it has to work because this means I can't take a vacation with my family this year. So I think in a lot of situations, recruiters aren't separating those pockets and they're not understanding this is a business expense versus a personal expense. I'm not saying everyone just funnels business money into their personal bank account, but in that regard, that conversation, I know specifically this individual didn't want to invest in marketing because he told me that allotment would basically knock out one to two vacations in the upcoming year. So it's probably a little bit of both.

Brad Bialy [00:23:41]:
It's not understanding what's working. If you don't know if it's working, you're not going to do it. You shouldn't do it in the first place. No one wants to throw away money more than me, trust me. So it's, you need to know what's working. But then when it is working, you should absolutely scale up, right? If every dollar you give me, I can give you three or four back or six back, but you'll write that check any day of the week, the issue becomes, it's hard to write the check for the first dollar if you don't know what to get from it.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:04]:
Love that. Well, jumping over to the quickfire questions and do it. You know, I think this is going to be fun just because of your vantage point of how many companies that you're talking to. For somebody that's like, lucky enough to get started in the recruiting industry in 2024, what advice would you give them to be successful in our space?

Brad Bialy [00:24:21]:
Great question. Talk to everybody. Make friends. Reach out to everybody. I personally have so many relationships across the industry just because I've had the opportunity to go out and speak and meet people that have become some amazing friends that I can bounce ideas around. I can talk about what's working, what's not working. If you're just getting started in this space, lock in, make friends. Reach out to everybody.

Brad Bialy [00:24:45]:
People that are outside your niche, people that are in your niche. Find somebody that you can trust and talk to them. And then also find people that you can respect and learn from. You know, I am a huge proponent of continuous learning, getting 1% better every day, doing what you can to consistently grow and develop. If you're just getting started in recruiting, understand that the space, while it sort of stays the same, evolves and changes very rapidly. So whoever you can consistently learn from, the better. But, yeah, my advice, lock in, meet everybody, make friends, and just continue learning.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:18]:
Same question, but for recruiters that have been around the block ten years, 20 years, 30 years, what advice would you give them to see success based on all the conversations of the companies that you're working with and you're seeing, don't.

Brad Bialy [00:25:29]:
Be afraid of change. Don't be afraid of change. You know, I think a lot of people grow successful businesses, and that's the way you do things, right? We grew to this number because of what we did. The world changes, things change. You need to try new new ideas, new strategies, new tactics, whatever it might be. Don't lose sight of your mission, vision, values, but understand that change is inevitable. So if you've been around for a long time, first off, huge compliments to you, because most don't stay in the industry long term, but understand that the companies that continue to evolve are the ones who continue to thrive.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:04]:
So what is separating those companies that are having that success versus the companies that are not, or just staying steady?

Brad Bialy [00:26:14]:
The staffing hub just put out a great report on the state of staffing that talks about that. We're not anywhere affiliated with them. But in my mind, outside of that report, I think the companies that grow are the ones who are open to change, are open to evolution, are open, and not afraid of things like AI, are not afraid of things like automation, are not afraid of, you know, am I going to lose my job tomorrow because of the robots? It's learning how to work alongside all of these things to make them, you know, an advantage, a strategic advantage and a competitive advantage.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:45]:
And do you have, like, we're talking about AI and robots and that kind of stuff? Do you have a favorite, like, rec tech tool that you absolutely love?

Brad Bialy [00:26:52]:
I use video quite a bit, so I think AI, the best tool is the one for your needs, right? And it's the best tool for the job, right. If you need a hammer, I'm not going to offer you a screwdriver. It's just you need the best tool for the job. So right now, I do two podcasts at Haley, a ton of video content, a ton of webinars. I break all of those up into bite size shareable videos using AI. So for me personally, day to day, I live by video. I love opus, though I use video quite a bit more candidly. We have a subscription at Haley, so that's why I use it more.

Brad Bialy [00:27:23]:
So it works really well for me. And then I love being in the weeds, so I use just good old chat. GPT I know there are thousands of, you know, different tools that are built on top of it. I like to go right to the source just because it's fun for me. So that's that's what I do.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:37]:
Awesome. Has there been a book that's had a huge impact on your own personal success?

Brad Bialy [00:27:41]:
The slight edge is a fantastic book, all about getting 1% better every single day. It's a good story. My wife and I went out one day to meet some friends, and there was another couple there, and I was just kind of talking to this guy about books, and he's like, Brad, I have a book that fundamentally changed my life. And anytime somebody's going to look you in the eyes and tell you something fundamentally changed their life. Benjamin, I bought it right there in the bar. That book I've given to the team. I've given it to so many people. I reread it every day, or not every day.

Brad Bialy [00:28:07]:
I can't read that fast, but I try to reread it every year. Outside of the slight edge, think and grow rich by Napoleon Hill, I do read every year. Absolutely love that book. Yeah, two good ones. I could go on, though.

Benjamin Mena [00:28:20]:
You've done a good job by growing into a leadership position at Haley marketing. What were some of the things that separated you or helped you get to that growth opportunity? Because you could have just easily stayed as an individual contributor. But what did you do different to to grow in your career?

Brad Bialy [00:28:37]:
That's a really good question. I think it's just my nature, right. I want to grow and develop every single day. I want to. I'm happy where I am right now, but I'm always sort of looking at what the next challenge is. Right. And it's interesting, you know, personally, whether it's in the gym, whatever it might be, you hit a goal, you had a pr. I personally struggle with, okay, let's celebrate this win.

Brad Bialy [00:28:55]:
Let's enjoy this. It's always, okay, well, great, you did this. What's next? So I'm always thinking, okay, here's where I am, but where do I want to be, you know, three years, five years? I think that sort of mentality mixed in with the culture at Halley of continuously pushing individuals to succeed and grow and develop. It really is a best case scenario for me.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:12]:
So thats the culture at the company. Its just the continue developing and that kind of culture is hard to create. Its talked about so many places, but its never implemented. How did you guys create that culture?

Brad Bialy [00:29:23]:
We used to be in an office, now were fully remote, but those principles havent changed. We have weekly lunch and learns. We have consistent consulting class twice a month. We have another consulting class once a month. We have group slacks. We have team slacks. We have consistently, we're talking about how to bring other people onto calls. So one thing, if you're in a remote setting, you lose the organic growth and development just by hearing somebody else in a cubicle over talking to a client or talking about something else.

Brad Bialy [00:29:52]:
So we're consistently trying to bring other people onto calls just to listen and learn and grow. We have a super, super open environment where if you have a challenge, you know, you bring it to the team, you talk about it as a team, marketers, it's interesting marketing. Everybody can have the right answer, right? At the end of the day, you can say, you know, Brad, what's the best tactic? How am I going to get applications tomorrow? What I tell you and what somebody else will tell you tomorrow, it doesn't mean either of us are wrong. It's just we have different ideas. So I think one of the biggest strengths of Haley is we have so many individuals who love doing what we do that we can bounce these ideas around all day and it's a ton of fun. But, you know, to your initial question, how do we push team members to grow and develop? There are so many opportunities to do so that it's just who we are. It's baked into our system. It's baked into our culture.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:39]:
I'm glad I asked that just because like so many places like that, growth culture isn't there, you have to make many places times you have to go create that growth culture for yourself.

Brad Bialy [00:30:47]:
Yeah, it is, right? So like I said, we have, I can think of offhand three consistent consulting classes that we have every month. We have weekly lunch and learns, which could be, hey, I found something cool on Facebook that I think will work for our clients. Anybody that wants to listen and just come and join for 15 minutes, they're usually 15 to 20, they're super short to, you know, our creative team is rolling out new websites or new tech or whatever it might be that we need to educate the whole team on. So it scales and it varies. We've had one, you know, recently where it's like I just learned a new chat GPT prompt that I think other people could learn from. Come and check it out for, you know, 1015 minutes. It's being intentional with sharing. It's being intentional with what it is that you know, and sharing it with others.

Brad Bialy [00:31:27]:
And it's also hiring the right people who want to be a part of that mix and who want to learn and who want to grow.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:32]:
So I absolutely love that kind of jumping back towards you. Like, you always want to be better, you always want to grow. You continually look at challenges in and outside work. What personally drives you for reaching that success?

Brad Bialy [00:31:45]:
Wow. I mean, we can get deep there, right? So I got a wife and son and a baby on the way that I absolutely love. And I mean, if, if you really want to go there, I just want to be the best version of myself for them. Right. And in everything that I do, I want to make them proud. Right. I think legacy is important to me. Understanding that my son and future daughter are going to have to look up to somebody and I want him to be the right person matters a heck of a lot to me.

Brad Bialy [00:32:07]:
I want them to know about work ethic. I want to know that nothing is handed to you, that you need to work for everything you have. And when you do, you should feel proud and feel rewarded for that. I mean, it's a huge accomplishment when you reach a goal and you reach a destination and you get to what you've been working so hard for, you know? Perfect example, I just signed up for the Buffalo marathon. Not many people know this yet. We talked about on our show that's coming out today, 26.2 miles. I don't run. I love strength training, but I signed up cause I want my son to know, listen, man, if you put your head to something, you put your mind to something, you could do it.

Brad Bialy [00:32:34]:
So I think at the end of the day, that's really it. That's my constant driver is just saying, listen, you got three people who depend on you, but I want them to know I'm giving everything I got every single day.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:45]:
I love that. And this is my favorite question. If you could go back in time with everything that you know now, yeah. With the ups and downs that you've had with your career and get a chance to sit down with like early day Brad, first or second month after college actually working, what advice would you give yourself?

Brad Bialy [00:33:06]:
Buckle up. That's a good question. You know, it's interesting because I host the show, too, over here, and that's a good question. My immediate reaction is buckle up, right? It's going to be an absolute hell of a journey. It's going to be a great adventure. Enjoy every minute of it, right? Because looking back on it, eleven years flew by and time stops for nobody, right? So I think at the end of the day, if I could go back and talk to, what was I, 21? Who, year old Brad. 21 year old Brad. It would just be, listen, man, it's going to be fun.

Brad Bialy [00:33:36]:
Buckle up, stay focused, stay committed, and it all works out in the end.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:39]:
Awesome.

Brad Bialy [00:33:40]:
Maybe, who knows? We got a long way to go here still, right? Not saying it's ended anywhere near yet. I don't want it to end anytime soon. But that's a really, really good question. Yeah, buckle up.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:49]:
And, you know, since you're the director of digital marketing.

Brad Bialy [00:33:52]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:52]:
One last question. Like, where do you see the future of recruiting going?

Brad Bialy [00:33:56]:
I think in a lot of ways recruiting is going to stay the same, right? We put great people to work and great opportunities. Fundamentally, what it is that we do doesn't really change, but how we do it has the potential to change quite a bit. And I'm on this wave lately because I'm giving a talk on AI very soon. So my brain is sort of going towards like, what's, what's next? I think for some it's a huge threat, right? Digital marketing, AI, the change of the world is a huge threat. For others, it is a massive open door that a lot of people have the potential to knock down and run through. So where do I think recruiting is going to go? I think in a lot of ways it stays the same. The more human you can be, the better people. Trust people at the end of the day.

Brad Bialy [00:34:36]:
They trust brands at the end of the day, but really they trust the people in front of the brand. You know, even if you're thinking about an influencer and a brand that you might buy a workout shirt from, you trust the person who is telling you about that shirt. You know, at the end of the day, you trust your recruiter. So, yes, the tactics to source and find leads, whatever it might be, that might change, that's changing by the day, but just as much changes, things stay the same.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:03]:
Awesome. Well, for the listeners that want to follow you, Brad, how do they go about following you?

Brad Bialy [00:35:08]:
So let's reach out on LinkedIn. You can connect with me, Brad Bailey, on LinkedIn. I share daily videos and ideas and thoughts on how you can take your marketing to the next level. You could learn about healing marketing by going to healymarketing.com and I would love it if you subscribe to the Secrets of Staffing success podcast where we talk about on one show, take the stage is where I bring on conference caliber thought leaders to talk about what's working in their space. And then on insights we talk about what's working in digital and recruitment marketing. So three places that you can learn from me, but really, I would just love to connect on LinkedIn and say hi.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:39]:
Awesome. And for the listeners, if you click on the show notes go down. I'll have the link to the podcast in there.

Brad Bialy [00:35:44]:
Appreciate you.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:45]:
Well, Brad, before I let you go, and this has been awesome. Yeah, there's some things that I'm going to go implement that I'm super good. Is there anything else that you would love to share with the listeners?

Brad Bialy [00:35:54]:
Just to thank you, man. I've had a really good time on this one. I have the opportunity to join quite a few shows. Really good questions. I appreciate you more than you know. I don't think there's anything that I need to say to the listeners that they don't already know themselves. Listen, you're a great recruiter. Go out and do it.

Brad Bialy [00:36:07]:
Be a recruiter. Find the tools and the tactics and the ideas that can help you in your day to day. But at the end of the day, you know what you're doing. Just stick to what works, maybe set a better goal, maybe trust data a little bit more. And you know, there are tools and tactics that we get there a little faster, but just stay on and keep on keeping on.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:24]:
Awesome. Well, super excited that you came on. Thank you for sharing so much, Brad. And for the listeners, I want you guys to keep crushing it. Make 2024 your best year yet. Thank you guys.

Brad Bialy [00:36:34]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast with Benjamin Mena.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:39]:
If you enjoyed, hit subscribe, subscribe and leave a rating.