Recruiting Sourcing Secrets with Ed Pedini from SeekOut

Intro [00:00:00]:

Welcome to the elite recruiter podcast with your host, Benjamin Menna, 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 [00:00:19]:

I'm excited for you guys to hear this podcast talking about the sourcing secrets. But before we get started, I just wanna give you guys a heads up. Coming soon, November 1st, is going to be the elite recruiter Community coming together, and then we got a few events on the horizon. So I will definitely keep you up with those. Can't wait for you guys to get involved, Get a chance to meet some other amazing listeners, and, let's all prepare to win 2024 together, guys. I'm excited about this episode Of the elite recruiter podcast, I have a special guest, Ed Pedini, who is the head of customer advocacy At a awesome company called SeekOut to talk about the secrets of sourcing. Right now, even with head the way the market is, One of the biggest troubles that every single one of us recruiters have is finding the right talent at the right time that is ready to make that move. And nowadays, talent doesn't wanna be on LinkedIn all the time.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:13]:

Talent like, they're they're getting hit up in so many different ways. So you have to go Use some out of the box techniques to find the people that your clients needs. That way, you have the success, and I am excited for Ed to come on And talk about the secrets of sourcing. So welcome to the podcast, Ed.

Ed Pedini [00:01:31]:

Thank you, Ben. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm very excited.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:34]:

So One of the big things that, we do first is do a deep dive into your background, and how did you even get started in this recruiting space?

Ed Pedini [00:01:44]:

I I think like a lot of recruiters, it was completely by accident. I was coming out, essentially a technical sales role for a startup that I've been working at for a while that had recently been acquired. And for the 1st time in a in a long time, for the time in, like, 10 years, I was working with recruiters not to not to hire people from my team, but because I was looking for a new job. And we'd be going through this process and and looking for something new. And, at one point, I don't even remember how it happened, somebody pulled up the conversation that, you know, we're hiring for ourselves. Maybe you wanna come and and be a recruiter with us, Which wasn't specifically what I was looking to do, but I figured, you know, here and little bit of interview practice, never heard anybody. So I went through the process, and interestingly enough, I discovered that it actually sounded like like a pretty good gig. Like, this is something that I'd I'd be doing previously to sort of build up my team, had a lot of domain experience, especially in the start ups that might be a good fit.

Ed Pedini [00:02:40]:

I actually see myself doing this kind of sort of three way sales work, as opposed to the two way sales work that I'd come from doing previously. That that interview process showed me that they weren't a particularly good place to work for, but I did come away feeling that there was something to the whole idea. So I I ended up taking that and going away and looking for a, boutique firm that specialized in start up technical talent, which is what I really wanted to work on at the time. Found 1, we liked each other, and the rest was essentially history.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:10]:

It is so funny how we just kind of fall into this space.

Ed Pedini [00:03:13]:

Yeah. Nobody really grows up wishing that they would be a recruiter, in my experience, But I I think for the right person, it's a it's a great career choice.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:21]:

Yeah. I'm totally with you on that. I think that's, like, you know, when you're going to college and going through school, like, How many different business options do do they show you? And recruiting is not one of them anywhere. True. So the you know, fast forward, know, you worked at a few different places, and now you're working for a company called SeekOut. Could you tell the listeners about SeekOut?

Ed Pedini [00:03:39]:

Absolutely. So we are a platform For managing talent. So for recruiters, we really help you find, identify, and hire, hard to find or niche talent across a a wide range of industry and roles, using our human powered AI assisted approach, that keeps recruiters in the driver's seat, but leverages AI and automation to make their lines as easy as possible. We also have a lot of products on the talent management side. So for teams and for organizations, we have solutions that help you build out your skills, implement career pathways, succession planning, manage learning and development, and give employees a really great, internal career experience As opposed to the pretty dire out of the box ones that you often get. So we're covering covering the whole band of talent management and talent acquisition. Although in my role, I am pretty firmly focused on the talent acquisition side of what we do.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:39]:

Awesome. So and I I'll just say to the listeners, I'm a huge fan of SeekOut. It is probably one of the best tools that I have seen in the cleared space when it comes to finding clear talent. They'd use a combination of, like, AI and machine learning to figure out if, like, you know, Some people actually have their their security clearance listed, but at the same time, like, they based on data that they have, they're able to fear, like, Who might have a security clearance? So I'm gonna give you a quick few rundowns. On that platform, it has about 3,700,000 people that is highlighted as Potentially can have a security clearance. And to break that down, TSSCI full scope poly is about 69,000, CI poly is about 213,000, People with a TS SCI over 800,000 and with a TS or a secret actually, if c TS is 1.4 and a secret about 1.4. So, like, As a cleared recruiter, this tool is awesome. So sorry, guys.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:33]:

No.

Ed Pedini [00:05:33]:

I appreciate the the shout out. You know, we've we've always been in the business of inferring people's skills and experience, trying to to use machine learning to read between the lines of what we see, on places like LinkedIn and and GitHub and Stack Overflow or specialist sites like Doximity. And sort of a a number of years ago now, We started doing a lot more work in the a and d space, and through our relationships with our customers. We learned that there was actually a significant challenge in identifying cleared talent. Not a lot of people actually put that on their profiles for lots of very good reasons a lot of the time. And a lot of the the traditional tools like the resume databases basis that people subscribe to, they have a relatively small subset of clear talent, and it's the same people over and over again. So if you're trying to, like, make net new hires or Discover new talent that wasn't really solving the problem. So our our engineering team and our data team came up with a a really innovative solution, that allows us to understand the work that people are doing, so where people are based, the job that you have, the company that you work for, the way that you talk about your tasks on some of these sites, and then use that to infer the kind of security clearance somebody likely has.

Ed Pedini [00:06:46]:

So you're working for a and d company 1, and you're in Washington DC and you're a data center tech, very, very likely that you must have at least this kind of security clearance to do that job. And we've been able to extrapolate that right across our our entire candidate database, to create what we think, is essentially the largest database of We'd tell them it's available anywhere. Right?

Benjamin Mena [00:07:07]:

Yeah. And talking about the job board stuff, I can't tell you how many times I've, like, looked at job boards over the past 17 years, and I I know these people by name now. She oh, so and so's looking in, on average, every 3 months.

Ed Pedini [00:07:19]:

Yep. Hey.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:20]:

How's it going? So it's nice having a a fresh batch of, new people to dig through. So, anyways, wanna dig into actually sourcing tough people.

Ed Pedini [00:07:30]:

Mhmm.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:30]:

And What is the like, start off by asking you, what is the sourcing environment look like right now in 2023?

Ed Pedini [00:07:39]:

I I think it is either very specific to the talent pools that you're trying to work in. You know, we do we do a lot of work in Health care, and a lot of our health care customers are looking for physicians and nurses, and that is a that is a really tough market right now. You know, there are a lot of people who've burnt out, who left the industry due to COVID. This is a a pool that's traditionally pretty hidden. Only about a third of nurses in the country have a LinkedIn profile. So they're hard to find passive candidates that are in that space. And they're the the recruiting teams, and the people in the roles themselves, aren't really used to going through the same process for passive Candidate is also saying that you see in things like software engineering and and other high-tech roles. I think that there are there are pockets of the market that Still haven't quite recovered, from some of the downsizing and hiring slowdowns that we've seen over the last sort of year and a half also.

Ed Pedini [00:08:37]:

Big tech is is the example of that that you see in the media all the time. Although we're feeling pretty good, we're seeing a lot of signs of customers starting to rebuild recruiting teams, I'm picking up hiring, planning pretty aggressively for 2024, so I've we're fingers crossed at the tail end of that. And then you've got those those traditionally difficult sourcing markets that just have a huge scarcity of talent, or have very invisible talent, that can present all sorts of challenges to the people who are looking for for those particular, your great people to bring into their organization.

Benjamin Mena [00:09:10]:

Well, that that kinda goes into a question, like, for the listeners out there. Like, we all know the niche that we're in, but what are the niches where it's hard to source Good talent for your clients and customers that you see.

Ed Pedini [00:09:23]:

I I would probably say great talent is hard to find. It's just across the board, but, You know, I think that, health care is a really big one. There are a lot of tools that are specifically made for health care teams. And there are a lot of data sources that then tell to finding people who have very specific health care licenses, or experience. Health care is also coming from a a background that's been a very, maybe, traditional recruiting environment. You know, they've relied on job boards, on career fairs, on educational institution relationships, on on referral programs for a very, very long time. And it was always it was always one of those passion industries. You know? You became a physician or you became another sort of health care practitioner because you love it, kinda like same reason that people become a a teacher or get into video games.

Ed Pedini [00:10:10]:

So they've never really had trouble hiring. And then COVID comes along, burn out a bunch of our best health care providers. People stop wanting to get into the industry. Demand for health care, talent goes up exponentially, but budgets don't get increased. So people are still working with the same recruiting teams and the same recruiting spend that they had pre COVID. And it really was just a recipe for disaster. Recruiters are getting burnt out. Roles are going unfilled.

Ed Pedini [00:10:38]:

We we talk to customers coming on board SeekOut who've Had nursing roles open for a year and a half. We've been trying to fill, like, a specific nursing headcount. So the The impact on on the health care institution, the impact on on patient outcomes and ability to provide a level of care and and The right beta ratios that they wanna provide, is really significant. So I think I think that's one, that we definitely see as being very, very tough. Perhaps, strangely, we also still continue to see, quite a struggle to find, well, for recruiters to find the talent that they really want to bring into their organization in big tech. You know, I I think that there are a lot more people on the market, application volumes have gone up a lot, and it's it's presenting a different problem. Like, now how do I review these many applications? Or if I I get 6,000 applications for an engineering role, how can I be sure that I actually Submitted the best 20 to the hiring manager, when I can't necessarily talk to 6,000 people? It's a it's a whole different set Sourcing challenges, like how do you source from an application pool, as opposed to how do I go out and solve path of candidates, but it's a it's a different side of of the same problem.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:53]:

And and before because I know you guys do some integration with pipelining with applicant tracking system too. But going back to some of these jobs that, you know, you see online and, like, 7000, 8000 applicants at like, you know, there is no way for a recruiter to be able to actually Successfully give a great candidate experience to 8,000 people if they have, like, 25 roles that they're in charge of.

Ed Pedini [00:12:18]:

It's very true, and and the sad part is that everybody is losing. Like, people who need work and who are interested in the position are losing because it's very, very hard to be noticed, amongst so much other talent, recruiters are losing, because they can't possibly provide a great candidate experience to everybody who applied in those kinds of Scenarios and, truthfully, you can't even be sure that you're putting the best people forward. In that case, more often than not, you have to live with putting The best people that I actually spoke to forward, and companies are losing because they don't necessarily have visibility to make sure that they're getting the best talent, they're not really doing their employer brand any favor when you're dispositioning 6 a half 1000 applications without even reviewing them, before moving on to your next role. It's The terrible situation actually shouldn't be minimized. I mean, it's it's adversely impacting a lot of people at the moment, and we can only all hope The the market picks up and goes back in the other direction. In the meantime, try and make it as painless as possible for everybody involved.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:16]:

So before we, like, go more on sourcing, I'm seeing a lot of tools on the candidate side of the house now utilizing artificial intelligence to go, like, mass apply. You know, is are we gonna see more and more of that moving forward?

Ed Pedini [00:13:31]:

It's it's probably part of the problem, to be completely honest. You know, I I think if you talk to the recruiters who are managing those roles, they're getting the 6 or 7,000 applications. They'll probably tell you that at first glance, it looks like 50 or 50% of them are somewhat irrelevant to the role, which isn't great for the person applying, and isn't great for the people who actually are a good fit that are in that pool too. The prevailing rumor is that at least some of this is being driven by those mass supply tools. I don't really have a good sense of how much People are really using that and how much traffic is coming, either from those kinds of tools, but it's a it's an interesting position we find ourselves in. On the recruiting side, we're trying to use AI and and machine learning and automation to make our lives easier. You know, candidates are using AI and machine learning and automation to try and make their lives easier. I how far away are we before it's AI, talking to AI, you know, trying to make hiring decisions, which is our kind of crazy outcome, but I I wonder where it's all gonna end.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:31]:

Yeah. I just I just had to ask about that because, like, you know, I see people talking about it. Then just over the weekend, I looked at one of my cleared postings, you know, Security clearance. 99% of people that apply don't have a security clearance, first of all. But then I popped in. It was, like, a 109 new applications. And if you want a good laugh, A 100 of the I think it was a 102 of them was just 1 person. Just it was like somehow was able to play a 102 times.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:55]:

I mean, you you have to

Ed Pedini [00:14:56]:

feel for people who are are looking for work, and are and are wanting to provide for their families and and in that position. I think Like, a lot of the advice that's going out to job seekers at the moment, especially those coming from, like, social media influencers is just really bad advice And isn't isn't coming from a a position of expertise or understanding of how these things work. And I think through that particular example, They'll be easy to get a job by applying the same role to a 100 times. It's on helping your chances by doing sort of thing. So it's unfortunate that that kind of Behavior is being encouraged, without people necessarily understanding that maybe they're hurting their chances as opposed to improving.

Benjamin Mena [00:15:36]:

Yeah. Unfortunately, that person didn't have a security clearance, so there's nothing I could do anyways. But I think and I think we could have a whole another episode about LinkedIn influencers that Have never done any hiring or have never done recruiting, but know all the the secrets that recruiters don't want you to know.

Ed Pedini [00:15:53]:

So, Leanna, we're we're on some of the same, Facebook recruiting groups, and and, you know, I think we we see some of those posts getting shared and, sort of have a a laugh and shake our head sometimes. But, it's it's the age we live in with social media and influences these days. It's getting harder and harder for people to understand. You don't want to believe and want to follow and whatnot to.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:13]:

And it's one of the reasons why I'm also, like, always encouraging my recruiter friends to actually also be the person out there creating content

Ed Pedini [00:16:19]:

Mhmm.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:20]:

Because you have to we have to Have the responsibility of at least creating a little bit of content to show what's real life and what's really happening and how you can actually really successfully make it through the marketplace, the job marketplace.

Ed Pedini [00:16:33]:

I I think that's great. That's super important. We should all be doing more.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:36]:

So but, yeah, back to sourcing. What do you by chance, do you know what one of the most interesting positions that somebody has found on your guys' platform Our most unique positions that somebody's been able to, like, stack down on your guys' platform.

Ed Pedini [00:16:54]:

That's a that's an interesting question. I we we have Thousands and thousands of customers who are using us on a daily basis, so I'm sure that there are a ton of interesting ones. The I'm not gonna be across them all, though. The one that I'm most proud of, I think, is one of our customers in the Advanced medical devices space, who I'm I'm not gonna name, actually hired their global head of robotic surgery research and development From a cold email that they sent to somebody that they found on SeekOut. And I think there's there's a lot of cool titles. I mean, we could go through, like, anybody's, sort of history, and we'd find sort of plenty VPs and and directors and and sort of c level folks in there. But that think about how many people in the world can possibly do that kind of work. Like, that's a I need tiny little talent pool, and it's something that's so impactful.

Ed Pedini [00:17:44]:

You know, I mean, that's a a field that's developing super rapidly, that's creating, sort of patient outcomes that weren't previously possible, especially for people who are in sort of remote communities, maybe don't necessarily have access, The kind of medical talent that a lot of take for granted. So I thought it was very, very happy to see that, both because I know that their sort of cut for higher ROI on that Particular one must have been absolutely fantastic, but also just because it must have been such a complicated search. Oh, yeah. That that's awesome.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:16]:

Is there any advice that you would give to recruiters that are looking at upping their sourcing game?

Ed Pedini [00:18:23]:

Sourcing is, I think, probably the hardest thing that we do in recruiting. You know, it is so far removed from a lot of our other activities. It's really a lot closer to to demand generation or digital marketing, than it is to to the rest of recruiting. For me, sourcing has always meant getting the right message to the right person at the right time. And each of those Three things are complicated problems. Like, what is the right message for for what you're trying to hire for, and who's the right person? And there's actually in reality, probably several different kinds of right people. And the right message for those people is different. And the time that you send the message for those people is different and the message at different times is different.

Ed Pedini [00:19:07]:

So you have this you have this huge interconnected challenge, of how do I put myself in the the candidate shoes? How do I understand what it is that I Potentially can offer as an employer that is gonna convince somebody that's maybe never even heard of me before to their role to come into a recruiting process to come and work with me. And then how do I shepherd everybody involved, the the recruiting coordinators, the hiring manager, the interview team, and, of course, the candidates themselves, Into exploring that in a in an ethical way and actually making an objective decision at the end of it for all the right reasons. There's no easy answer to a lot of that. And coming coming from a background of of having trained sourcing teams, after the time, I don't even necessarily understand how to lean into other people. It either just clicks or it doesn't, but it's it's, I think, One of those skills that really just comes from deep experience in the subject matter that you're working in and talent pools that your organization hires, and the empathy of really being able to put yourselves in the hiring manager seat or in the candidate seat and really understanding the things that matter and how to showcase those in the appropriate way.

Benjamin Mena [00:20:25]:

Message yeah. I think you're right. I absolutely love love everything that you said. You know, messaging, the time of the messaging, especially for some of these, like, These candidates with these top skill sets, like, they're getting canned messages that were written, like, a template from the eighties and they're still using today. How do you stand out to be different, to be the one that gets the response, whether a phone call or an email or a message or a postcard?

Ed Pedini [00:20:51]:

Absolutely. My my approach was always to be, heavy on information and transparency, and there's no no single way of doing this. There's a lot of different sort of outreach methodologies that work. But I did a lot of my recruiting in the tech space, specifically with with tech start ups. So you're maybe sometimes got a garage and a couple of VC dollars, and you're going to somebody at Amazon that, package that's 5 times higher than you currently operate, and saying, hey. You should really come and try this instead. So that's that's not a tough sell. And, You know, in in that industry, a lot of the value coming to do a role like that, comes in some really specific places.

Ed Pedini [00:21:33]:

If you're you're leaving an organization like Amazon, you're coming to work for a small tech start up, there's value in the fact that you can work directly with founders. You're gonna be like sitting in the same open office with the CEO, the guy that just convinced Madrona Venture Capital to give him $60,000,000. So who knows at least something? And you guys are gonna work through this, and and you're gonna end up with a big network of VC connections if that's something that's in your future. Or maybe You're leaving an environment where your job is to take these 500 lines of code, and spend the next year trying to squeeze 0.1 of a microsecond of performance out of it, into an environment where you're watching across an entire codebase, and get to do something that's that's hugely impactful to the entire customer experiences. A million other reasons that could potentially come up. The the secret is to find the ones of those that are actually true and real, as opposed to the ones that actually sound nice, and find the people who want those things for the next step in their career. And that could be a title change. It could be a relocation.

Ed Pedini [00:22:32]:

It could be more money. It could be more responsibility. It could be less responsibilities. It could be working with a CEO. It could be VC connections. It could Tech stack, it could be learning and development opportunity. They're literally endless. But the hard part, I think, is often understanding what Just sounds good or what we say about ourselves, versus what it actually is, so that people who come across find that it's It's true and stay and go on to be great employees.

Ed Pedini [00:23:00]:

I think if you can if you could figure that out, and really get to the truth of it, There is there is an opportunity for everybody, and there is somebody for every job, and and sort of bringing those connections together is really what we're doing as as sourcing professionals. Damn.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:15]:

Good. Love that. I can't wait to, like, replay that on video.

Ed Pedini [00:23:19]:

Unfortunately, it sounds good the 2nd time around. Well and it's gonna be

Benjamin Mena [00:23:24]:

kind of a similar question, but in the cleared space for my fellow cleared recruiters out there. Like, what advice what sourcing advice would you give to a A recruiter in the gov con space to be successful in finding their people.

Ed Pedini [00:23:36]:

You know, I I think some of the same relatively generic advice still applies. Like, you really you really need to understand what you're hiring for and why. And some of the really simple things, like, what does success look like in this role and how to articulate that for somebody. My understanding of the a and d space is at very incestuous, especially when you start looking at the large employers. Like, people have probably worked at your organization before or worked on one of the projects before if they have clearance. Sir, how are you gonna talk about why this opportunity is different? How are you gonna talk about the kind of work that you might be doing, the impact of that work, like what you're what you're doing at, Sandia National Laboratories versus what you're doing at Raytheon. They might Might be relatively the same job in terms of title and requirements, but they might be very, very different in terms of culture and values and the the impact that your work Might be having on a on a piece of tech versus potentially national security and finding people who actually want to do those things. So I think that That really first step of truly understanding the opportunity is something that's very important.

Ed Pedini [00:24:46]:

And then it's how do you find net new talent. Are you able to go into a resume database and find the people that you're looking for? Do you have an ATS that lets you actually search and rediscover past talent, and reengage those people, who've previously put their hands up and said they're interested in your brand, but maybe didn't make it through the process. Or can you go out and find net new people through your own sort of OS in sourcing techniques or or using a tool like SeekOut To be able to find talent that's maybe not getting pushed by every other recruiter or has been overlooked by other people, or who isn't necessarily obvious in your Space and and then sort of putting those very same building blocks together. Like, how do I get the right message to the right person at the right time, to make that connection?

Benjamin Mena [00:25:30]:

Awesome. Absolutely love that. And I know you guys are a little bit on the forefront of the AI and the ML space, but what's your thoughts on artificial intelligence Across the entire recruiting industry.

Ed Pedini [00:25:41]:

It's it's an interesting space right now. And I think I think When people say artificial intelligence these days, a lot of the time they mean generative AI, so things like chat g p t. I mean, we've been Saying things like AI for a very, very long time, and it's only really since Jet GPT has AI become something that most people would consider very different. I think that even though you should never say never, I I struggle to see a world Where recruiters are truly replaced by AI, I could see it impacting a lot of other jobs, but ultimately, we're people hiring people, and people working with other people. I don't think people wanna be hired by a computer or by an algorithm. I don't think people want to work with a computer We're an algorithm. This is ultimately a very social thing that we're doing, and personality and culture and values, faith, And negotiation and influence, these are always gonna be things that are incredibly important in the recruiting process, until we get to the point where nobody's actually working with anybody else anymore. So I think the the short term impacts are probably gonna be here very soon.

Ed Pedini [00:26:52]:

You know, I think that we're probably gonna see very different ways of interacting with computer software very soon. I mean, look at look at Chat GPT, the the essentially very first, Very good conversational user interface. You can talk to it and have an ongoing conversation, and it knows context that it's Not really artificial intelligence, but at least it pretends to be, and it's producing results. Bringing that to computer software as opposed to Keyboard and mouse as opposed to the old style, you know, drag and dictate voice recognition is probably coming. And whether or not it sticks and people wanna do it, I think it's too early to say, But there, I think, is very, very big changes to user interfaces coming soon. And I think automation is gonna get so much better very soon. True. Like, we're already using a lot of automation in recruiting.

Ed Pedini [00:27:37]:

You've got your applicant tracking system. You have your scheduling automation tools like Calendly. You have your email campaigns if you're if you're out They're doing sourcing, and these things have been proven to make a huge difference. Right? Like a like a 4 to 6 step email Campaign typically gets you a 30 to 40% better response rate than a single email. Everybody who does sorting knows that. So what what happens when you can take the power of AI And supercharge your automation to be doing more and more of these things. And and that's really where I think we're gonna see some of the largest benefits. For for recruiters and for employers, I think the the key is to really think about, If I use AI in this way or if I automate this in this way, do I actually create a better candidate experience? Because in the end, that's all that matters.

Ed Pedini [00:28:24]:

If you're not creating a better candidate experience, you're not gonna get more hires. So if you're thinking, hey. I can use AI to do one way video interviews for my applications, and get rid of my recruiting team,

Benjamin Mena [00:28:34]:

That doesn't create a better candidate experience,

Ed Pedini [00:28:37]:

and you're not able to make good hires. But if you're thinking about, hey. I can AI to automate my scheduling process so you don't have to send 5 emails backwards and forwards, and I can build out a 5 or a 6 person interview in, like, a second, instead of the hour and a half it takes me right now, that's great for everybody. So I think that's that's the lens that people should be looking at these tools through, and I think those are the the really short term advantages that we can see from AI in this year or 2.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:05]:

Awesome. But before we go to the quick fire questions, there anything else you'd love to share about sourcing, seek out?

Ed Pedini [00:29:11]:

I mean, it's it's a topic that I'm very passionate about. You know, I think I think I maybe it's come Crossing the conversation today, but I'll I'll share my very controversial opinion about sourcing, which is that it is exactly the same regardless of the domain that you're working in. Sourcing a CFO is exactly the same as sourcing a software engineer or as sourcing a frontline retail worker. It's the same process. It's the same understanding of the job. It's the same concept of the right message to the right person at the right time. Maybe you're just putting the bricks together in a slightly different process. I mean, a lot of people don't feel that way, but it's always something that I thought was was very true, through all the recruiting work that I've done.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:50]:

Well, onto the quick fire questions, Ed.

Ed Pedini [00:29:52]:

Okay.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:53]:

And real quick. Yeah. They don't have to be a quick answer. Like, I recently renamed it the quick fire questions, and somebody just gave, like, 5 second answers one time. Like, no. No. No. Like, it's It's really just separating the podcast into actionable insights.

Ed Pedini [00:30:08]:

Alright. Let's do it.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:10]:

What advice would you give to a brand new recruiter That's just getting started in our industry this year.

Ed Pedini [00:30:18]:

Pick up the phone call and talk to candidates. There is not a single thing about the role that you can't learn from talking to people who do the job at the moment and asking them what it would make what it would take to make them interested in a new opportunity. You learn the terminology. You learn the industries. You learn the benefits and employment salary packages that are out there. You just gotta get in front of candidates and understand the market Deeply as you possibly can.

Benjamin Mena [00:30:43]:

Awesome. What advice would you give to a recruiter that's I don't wanna say, like, been around the block, but it's been in the industry 5, 10, 20, 25 years. What advice would you give them to them to to continue to have success?

Ed Pedini [00:30:55]:

I think it's easy to get complacent, and that was something that I struggle with when I was a a hands on recruiter. You've been doing this for 10 years, and it's it's very easy to say, hey. You know what? I don't really need to do a great hiring manager interview. I have this Intake meeting. You know, I I know this roll backwards. We can just skip that. Or, hey. I don't really have to do, an in-depth interview with this applicant.

Ed Pedini [00:31:14]:

We can tell in the 1st 5 minutes if they're gonna be a good fit or I think those things tend to sort of creep up on you, when you're not paying attention. And often it's a sign of, unfortunately, having More work that you can get through as opposed to anything else, but it's those little details, and it's actually running through the process properly every time, that make the biggest difference between success and failure.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:38]:

Awesome. Has there been a book that has had a huge impact on your career?

Ed Pedini [00:31:44]:

For me, for for a nonrecruiting book, I really love scaling startups by Verne Harnish. It's a book that's been sort of published a number of times that specifically talks about what it is that makes successful businesses grow and flourish while other organizations manage to to reach that level of scale on success. And in their view, a lot of it actually comes down to organizational planning and strategy. Like, did you did you Truly come up with a process, and did you run it, as opposed to just crossing your fingers and hoping that everything was gonna be okay? And I remember the 1st time I read it, it got me to realize that there's an awful lot of figure crossing out there, and it really, really resonated with me in having a very deliberate process driven approach to trying to reach success. So I mean, you'll get it every time, but at least it means that you know that you've you've done the right things or at least everything that you can do. I've been a Startup my entire career, never worked for a company larger than SeekOut. We're about 250 people at the moment. So it's, it's something that resonated very strongly with me, and I Try and bring to every role that I go to.

Benjamin Mena [00:32:45]:

I I feel like the next question, I I might know the answer that you're gonna say. But what is your favorite rec tech tool at the moment?

Ed Pedini [00:32:53]:

Okay. So we'll leave we'll leave SeekOut out of it because that's just cheating. I think there are some browser extensions out there that are super helpful. I there is there's a bunch of different ones of these, but I have, something called extensify, which is a extension that lets you toggle other extensions on and off from the extension bar. So if you're like me and you have 40 different browser extensions installed, but you don't want them running all the time because Slow down your pages. You can just easily turn them on and off without going into the, extensions. And the other one that I really love is something called open multiple URLs. And there's like it's like 50 different versions of this in the extension store, but basically when you click on it, it just opens up a text box, and you can drop as many URLs even just a big block of text containing URLs into it, and press go, and it will extract all the the web pages out and then pop them open in a new tab.

Ed Pedini [00:33:46]:

So when you wanna do something like go through a 100 LinkedIn profiles, you can just copy and paste them out of Excel or whatever other tool you're using, Drop them here, have them all open in the background, and then sort of go through them 1 by 1, to do whatever it is that you're trying to achieve. That's cool. Outside of that, like everybody else, probably 80% of every recruiting organization I've ever worked in has run off Excel. Regardless of what other kind of ATS or CRM we have in place, so I don't think spreadsheets are going anywhere anytime soon.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:17]:

Yeah. GPT needs to help the spreadsheets? Yeah. Awesome. So what do What do you think has been a huge part of your own personal success career success?

Ed Pedini [00:34:29]:

I I got into recruiting Very late in my career. So I was already sturdy when I became a recruiter. I had come out of quite a lot of Other stuff in the startup space, in a previous life, when I the 1st agency that I joined, we had a, I think, a really great training program For for the 1st 2 weeks to sort of bring this up to their process. And at the end of that, one of our directors at the time, you know, he came to the front of the room and said, hey, we leave this for the end, because if everything else is completely forgotten, there's 1 piece of advice we want you to remember. If you just do what you said you were gonna do When you said you were gonna do it, you will be ahead of 99% of other people that you're competing against. And I I to be fair, I dismissed that when I heard it. Like, that seemed like a ridiculous thing to say. Like, Who's not doing what they said they were gonna do? As I as I matured and as I experienced the industry firsthand and as I went on to do lots of other things, I actually found a lot of people don't do what they say that they will get.

Ed Pedini [00:35:28]:

Whether it be a follow-up email, or sending that candidate submission when they said they would Or having the check-in call or being on time or literally any one of a 1000000 other things. The one thing that I've taken away throughout my entire time since then is That is actually very, very true. It applies to every single person in every single job. And if you just do what you said you were gonna do when you said you were gonna do it, You really will be ahead of 99% of the people that you can be game guest.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:55]:

That's great advice. The next question I'm gonna ask it 2 different ways. 1 in recruiting and one At the beginning of your career. Mhmm. With everything that you know now, if you could go sit down with yourself when you just started out your career, Pre even prerecruiting, what advice would you give yourself?

Ed Pedini [00:36:15]:

Oh, that's a tough one. Create Russell's as a as a recruiter. I think at the very beginning of my career, I would have been More deliberate about finding a recruiting community, about finding subject matter experts who'd been there and done that, who knew more than I did, and could actually help show me the ropes and and maybe skip many of the pitfalls, but I only found myself on the way through. Even though I had colleagues and, you know, at the time, I was working for an agency, so there was quite a lot of internal knowledge sharing. I was never active in things like source code or recruiting groups, for a number of years, after getting into recruiting industry. I probably Probably learned a lot of things the hard way because of that. So I think being being at more deliberate about finding subject matter It's a mentor. It's it's something that probably would have been a big help at the time.

Ed Pedini [00:37:11]:

But perhaps I was a little bit too stubborn to realize back then.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:15]:

And that kinda jumps on another topic. Like, how where is there? Hundreds of thousands of recruiters across United States. But if, like, I feel like I'm tapped into a lot of the different, like, recruiting communities, and those recurring recruiting communities are still small, But they're always giving information and always helping each other out. Like, why are so many other recruiters out there not Jumping into these some of these spaces and, like, up leveling themselves.

Ed Pedini [00:37:41]:

Yeah. It's a it's a strange space, but it's it's one that I've spent a lot of time thinking about. I mean, we're we're definitely not all extroverts. There are a ton of introverted recruiters, and I'd put myself in that category as well. But we're definitely a group of people that seem to seek out networking opportunities, and community. I guess it's it's it's Part of being successful at the role, it's it's so much of what we do in our day jobs, that you you have to find a way of doing it outside of that too, but the The recruiting communities are so fragmented. You know, there's there's no central place to go for this sort of stuff. It all tends to be very role specific or very domains What were region specific, all made up of pretty small groups? I think they're hard to find.

Ed Pedini [00:38:23]:

I think the barrier to entry can be a little bit high sometimes. It seems a little scary maybe, to to jump in as a as a newbie recruiter, when you've got, you know, Dean De Costas and And Glenn got markers, you know, post posting in these groups, but I I don't know. Maybe it is something that we can all work on making more accessible. That's an interesting observation.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:44]:

Is she just a thought because I remember, like, I mean, I think it was years. It was years of recruiting before I even found out about things like SourceCon, and, You know, of course, like, the group structure has changed with, like, social media. Social media has done a great job, like, creating that, but, like, is I think it was somebody on a phone call that told me, Like, years ago, like, hey, there's a thing called SourceCon. I'm like, what's SourceCon? And I'm like, like, it's about sourcing, and I'm like, well, that sounds fun. And, you know, ended up going to that event. And, you know, personally, like, I had to I was a contractor at that point in time and, You know, had to ask for the time off, which time off meant you didn't get paid. Paid for my own flight and everything, but, you know, Really touching into some of these communities, I I I will absolutely say changed my recruiting career.

Ed Pedini [00:39:30]:

So It's one of the double edged swords, I think, about our industry. You know, on the one hand, the barrier to entry of being a recruiter is nothing. Like, if you have a, you know, computer, a laptop, and a cell phone, you can be a recruiter. And and there are, At least when we're in a better hiring cycle, you know, there's no shortage of of agency in other organizations that take entry level people and and give them the opportunity to do that role. The flip side is there are very few people who do it really well, and there aren't a lot of really recognized places to go out and learn. Can't do an MBA course in recruiting. There's not a lot of online education that's, like, super high quality, especially when it gets into some of the really nitty gritty, of the things that we do, if you weren't lucky enough to have really good mentorship or just be able to figure it out for yourself from, like, first principles, it's very easy to get lumped into that Unfortunate used car sales stereotype that comes across in the industry. I think I think education as a whole This is something that we we all need to work on, and I think it's something that would really benefit us, but, of course, really benefit employers and and candidates as well.

Ed Pedini [00:40:35]:

So

Benjamin Mena [00:40:36]:

well, Ed, this has been an amazing interview. Is there anything else you'd love to share before I let you go?

Ed Pedini [00:40:40]:

I just really appreciate the opportunity Be here. Thank you for inviting me on and listening to me prattle on about a whole bunch of stuff that hopefully somebody finds interesting, but, but appreciate the opportunity. It was fun chatting. Always love To, try and share feedback and advice with all the people in the industry, and, hopefully, somebody will find it useful.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:59]:

Awesome, Ed. Well, for For the listeners, I just wanna say thank you guys for listening, and until next time, guys.

Intro [00:41:04]:

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